Police opened fire on a van in the Asgiriya area of Gampaha on Saturday night, wounding the driver, after he allegedly rammed a police jeep while trying to escape a narcotics check, the Daily Mirror and Hiru News both reported on Sunday.
The driver was arrested and admitted to Gampaha Hospital under police guard.
How the operation unfolded
Both outlets give the same sequence. Officers from the Weliweriya Police Station mounted a special operation after the Western Province Intelligence Division passed on information that narcotics were being distributed in the Gampaha area using a van.
Having confirmed the suspect vehicle was travelling towards Udugampola, officers followed it in a police jeep. The driver, apparently unaware he was being tailed, stopped near Malwatta Junction on the Udugampola road.
When officers got out of the jeep to inspect the vehicle, the driver drove the van backwards and forwards several times, colliding with a number of other vehicles on the road, before ramming the police jeep in what both reports describe as an attempt to hit the officers and flee.
Police then opened fire on the van. The driver sustained gunshot injuries and was taken into custody.
What was recovered
A search of the van produced 15 grams of heroin and 9 grams of “ice”, the street name for crystal methamphetamine.
The quantities are modest set against the scale of the operation that produced them — an intelligence-led surveillance operation that ended with officers discharging firearms on a public road. Neither outlet addresses that disparity, and neither reports whether the van was carrying anything else.
The Weliweriya Police are continuing their investigation.
Context
The shooting comes a day after President Anura Kumara Dissanayake told a Polonnaruwa rally that the government would grant no pardon and hold no negotiations with the underworld, naming drug trafficking alongside organised crime and corruption as areas where enforcement would not be relaxed.
Not reported
Neither outlet names the driver, gives his age, says where he was wounded or describes his condition. Neither says whether anyone else was in the van, whether any of the motorists whose vehicles were struck were injured, or how many shots were fired.
Neither report states whether the discharge of firearms will be referred for independent review, which is standard practice in many jurisdictions after police shoot a member of the public, nor whether the driver has been produced before a magistrate. NewsFirst had not filed on the incident at the time of writing, and Ada Derana’s site was unreachable.
