A man has been arrested in Kuliyapitiya in possession of a foreign-manufactured 12-bore firearm, a live hand grenade and six live BMG-type cartridges, Hiru News reported, citing police.
The arrest was made by officers of the Organised Crime Investigation Division of the Criminal Investigation Department following a raid on Saturday. Acting on information received, officers searched a house in the Walakumburamulla area of Kadanegedara, where the weapons and ammunition were recovered.
The suspect is a 40-year-old resident of Walakumburamulla, Kuliyapitiya. The CID is continuing its investigation.
A live grenade in private hands, again
The recovery lands in the middle of a run of grenade cases. Police have been dealing with four grenade attacks in 45 days attributed to organised criminal groups, among them the Dehiwala attack that killed two children on 11 September.
Security sources told the Daily Mirror last week that old military grenades change hands on the black market for as little as Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 20,000, and that they circulate through areas associated with former military personnel, where devices may remain buried and can stay dangerous for years. They said criminal groups use them mainly to intimidate rather than to kill.
This case is an interception rather than an attack: the device was recovered intact, before use.
An unexplained detail
Hiru does not say what weapon would fire the six BMG-type cartridges recovered alongside the shotgun. No such weapon is listed among the items seized, and the report does not address the mismatch or say whether police are searching for one.
Not reported
Neither report names the suspect, says whether he has previous convictions, or links him to any named group or to any of the recent attacks. Neither says how the CID came by its information, whether anyone else was present at the house, when the suspect will be produced in court, or which magistrate’s court the case falls to.
The Daily Mirror’s listings were unavailable and Ada Derana’s site returned a CloudFront error at the time of writing.
Update: NewsFirst confirms the arrest
NewsFirst filed its own account of the raid on Sunday morning, corroborating the seizure in all material respects: a foreign-manufactured 12-bore firearm, a live hand grenade and six live BMG rounds, recovered by the CID’s Organised Crime Investigation Division acting on information received, from a 40-year-old resident of Walakumburamulla, Kuliyapitiya.
The two outlets differ on one spelling. Hiru places the house in Kadanegedara; NewsFirst gives the area as Kandanegedara. Both agree on Walakumburamulla and on Kuliyapitiya.
NewsFirst does not state the day of the raid, so Hiru’s account remains the only one placing it on Saturday. It also offers no explanation for the six BMG-type cartridges recovered without a weapon capable of firing them — the mismatch noted above stands unaddressed by both newsrooms.
