Two men transporting 370 kilograms of fish allegedly caught using explosives in a lorry have been taken into Sri Lanka Navy custody, NewsFirst reported on Wednesday afternoon.
The seizure was made during a search operation along the Yahappar beach area in Mulankavil, which NewsFirst places in Mannar.
The suspects are aged 29 and 48 and are described as residents of Mannar. Both have been handed over to the Mannar Fisheries Inspector’s Office for further investigation, along with the seized stock.
A lorry, not a boat
What distinguishes this case from most in the Navy’s inshore enforcement reports is the point of interception. The suspects were stopped in transit by road with a consolidated load, rather than at sea or while landing a catch — which means the seizure caught the distribution stage rather than the fishing itself.
That pattern has recurred in recent northern cases. Earlier this month a 38-year-old woman was arrested after more than 3,200kg of blast-caught fish were found at a storage site in the Puthumathalan area of Mullaitivu — also a stockpile rather than a vessel. In a separate case the same week, a court ordered more than 200kg destroyed after fisheries officials and a Public Health Inspector found the catch unfit for human consumption.
Where this sits in the enforcement series
The case falls outside the window covered by the Navy’s most recent periodic report, which recorded 65 arrests and 26 impounded dinghies between September 1 and 11. Arrest totals in that series have run at 41 for the first quarter, 77 in April and 44 over the second half of May, with enforcement concentrated in northern and eastern waters rather than island-wide.
Fishing with dynamite or other explosives is prohibited in Sri Lanka. A blast kills marine life indiscriminately across a wide radius, including juveniles and non-target species, and damages the seabed and reef structure that stocks depend on to recover. Cases are ordinarily handed to the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources for prosecution under the Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Act.
The district attribution is unclear
NewsFirst locates Mulankavil in Mannar and says the suspects were handed to the Mannar Fisheries Inspector’s Office. Mulankavil is, however, ordinarily identified as a village in the Poonakary divisional secretariat division of Kilinochchi District, on the Palk Bay coast adjacent to Mannar’s northern waters. Whether the operation took place in Kilinochchi and the handover was made to the nearest fisheries office, or the location is in Mannar as filed, is not resolvable from the report.
Not reported
NewsFirst does not say when the operation took place, which naval command conducted it, whether the lorry was impounded, where the fish was destined for, or whether any explosives were recovered. It does not state what charges the two face, whether the catch will be destroyed as in the earlier Mullaitivu-area case, or whether the pair are linked to any of the suspects held in the September 1–11 sweep.
No other verified newsroom had filed on the seizure at the time of writing. The Daily Mirror and Hiru News listings carried no mention of it, and Ada Derana was unreachable behind a CloudFront block.
