Officers of the Criminal Investigation Department have searched several locations including the home and office of former minister Douglas Devananda, as part of an investigation into firearms said to have been held without licence.
Police said the searches were carried out in connection with weapons that had reportedly been in Devananda’s possession.
Among the firearms issued to him by the Sri Lanka Army in 2001 was a pistol later discovered near a culvert in the Weliweriya area in 2019, investigators said. The weapon was recovered after information was provided by the organised crime figure Makandure Madush.
Devananda is a former cabinet minister and leader of the Eelam People’s Democratic Party.
Not reported
NewsFirst’s filing does not say where the searched residence and office are located, whether Devananda was present, how many locations were searched, or whether anything was recovered. It does not say how many weapons the investigation covers in total, what became of the other firearms issued in 2001, or what Devananda’s account of them is. No comment from him or from the EPDP appears in the report.
The filing also does not place the search within the wider investigation — it does not say what stage the case has reached, whether any proceedings are already on foot, or what prompted the operation now. This desk has not previously covered the matter, and no second verified Sri Lankan newsroom filing on today’s search was located during a search of Ada Derana, Daily Mirror, Hiru News and EconomyNext. Ada Derana has been unreachable behind a CloudFront block for 33 consecutive days.
Material circulating from non-verified outlets describes earlier stages of a firearms investigation involving the same 2001 weapons and the same 2019 recovery. None of it carried a publish date this desk could extract, so it is not relied on here and is not linked.
