More than two kilometres of copper strip disappeared from the lightning conductors of the General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University Hospital during 2022 and 2023, the Committee on Public Enterprises was told on Friday.
COPE chairman Dr Nishantha Samaraweera gave the figure when officials of the Kotelawala Defence University were summoned before the committee, NewsFirst reported. The committee instructed Ministry of Defence officials to expedite the investigation into the disappearance, and directed the Defence Secretary to speed up the inquiry and submit a report.
Why lightning conductors matter here
The loss is not only a question of the metal’s value. Lightning protection systems work by giving a strike a low-resistance path to earth, and a conductor with two kilometres of strip removed from it cannot be assumed to do that. The hospital is a working teaching facility attached to the country’s military university.
Neither the filing nor the committee, on this account, addresses whether the system was repaired, whether the hospital has been without functioning lightning protection in the years since, or whether any risk assessment was carried out.
What is not established
The report does not value the missing copper, and no rupee figure was put to the committee on this account. It does not say how the loss was discovered, when it was first reported, who conducted the investigation now described as ongoing, or why it remains unfinished three to four years after the period in question.
No individual is named as a suspect, and there is no indication whether the matter has been referred to the police, whether any disciplinary action has followed, or whether anyone has been interdicted. The filing does not record what the university’s officials told the committee in response — only that they were summoned and that instructions were issued over their heads to the ministry.
Nor is a deadline reported for the report the Defence Secretary has been asked to produce.
This account rests on a single verified source. No other verified newsroom had filed on the committee’s proceedings at the time of writing. Ada Derana could not be checked: its site has returned HTTP 403 to this desk for 35 consecutive days.
Source: How Did KDU Copper Strips Go Missing? COPE Wants Answers — NewsFirst, 23 October 2026.
