A 32-year-old woman died after falling into a well at Maduruppitiya, Algama, in the Warakapola area, while helping to rescue her pet cat, which had fallen in.
Police gave the following account to Hiru News, which reported it at 11.16 p.m.
What police say happened
She heard cats crying behind the house and went to check, and found that one of her pet cats had fallen into the well.
She then went to the well with her father. To locate the animal in the dark she switched on the torch on her mobile phone and directed the light down the shaft. While her father was preparing to lift the cat out using a bucket tied to a rope, she leaned towards the well to keep the light on it.
She lost her balance and fell in. Police said she struck her head hard against a concrete section as she fell and sustained serious injuries.
A relative helped bring her up out of the well and she was taken to hospital. She had already died.
Not reported
Hiru’s filing does not name the woman, give her occupation, or say whether she lived at the address. It does not state the depth of the well, whether it was covered or walled, or whether the cat was recovered.
It does not name the police station handling the case, say whether a magistrate’s inquiry has been ordered, or give the hospital. No time of the incident is given — only the time of publication.
No other verified newsroom had filed on this when the account was written. The Daily Mirror’s breaking-news listing and NewsFirst’s homepage did not carry it, and Ada Derana has returned a CloudFront block to this desk for more than a month and could not be checked. This account rests on a single Sinhala-language filing and should be treated as provisional.
Hiru illustrated its report with an image labelled in-frame as AI-generated — a reconstruction, not a photograph of the scene. It is not reproduced here.