The Illegal Assets Investigation Division has frozen property in Panadura belonging to an associate of the drug trafficking suspect known as “Kudu Salindu”, and separately impounded a bus it says belongs to the organised crime figure “Karandeniya Sudda” — a vehicle police suspect was used to carry the gunman in the February killing of a lawyer and his wife.
Both orders run for two weeks, Hiru News reported on Saturday morning, citing the Police Media Division.
The property at Panadura–Malamulla comprises a two-storey house valued at about Rs 20 million and two land plots worth about Rs 2.5 million, all suspected of having been bought with drug trafficking proceeds. A 45-year-old man from Panadura–Eluwila has been arrested in connection with the investigation.
The second order covers a bus worth about Rs 8 million. Police say it belongs to Karandeniya Sudda and was also bought with money from the drug trade.
The bus and the Akuregoda killings
The significant element is what police say the bus was used for. They suspect it is the vehicle that transported the gunman who travelled to Thalangama on 13 February to kill an attorney-at-law and his wife in a car park.
That is the Akuregoda double murder, a case this desk has followed since May. Police appealed in May for help finding the driver of the vehicle used by the gunmen; a suspected gunman, a former soldier, was arrested at Delduwa on 21 February, and a man from Minuwangoda was arrested on 8 October over forged documents allegedly prepared to help the main suspect leave the country. Saturday’s filing is the first to tie a specific vehicle, and an owner, to the transport of the gunman.
Hiru’s account places the shooting in a car park, which matches the description this desk originally carried from Newswire and sits against the Daily FT’s February report that the couple were inside their own vehicle when gunmen in another car opened fire. That discrepancy remains unresolved.
Who the two men are
“Karandeniya Sudda” is Sobanahandi Jayalath de Silva, named in our archive as a leader of an organised crime syndicate operating in the Southern Province. His brother, Sobanahandi Sanath de Silva — known as “Raju” — was repatriated from India in April and later placed under a 90-day detention order; police have linked that network to 48 murders in the Southern Province.
“Kudu Salindu” is a Panadura-based trafficking suspect whose associates have featured in earlier asset actions, including two arrested with crystal methamphetamine at Payagala in April and a May court order freezing Panadura properties held by four women in a drug-money case.
A figure that does not add up
Hiru’s opening line values the frozen Panadura property at Rs 25 million, but the breakdown it attributes to the Police Media Division in the next sentence — a house of about Rs 20 million plus two land plots of Rs 25 lakhs, or Rs 2.5 million — comes to Rs 22.5 million. This desk reports the itemised figures, which are the ones attributed to the police, and records the Rs 25 million total as unreconciled.
Not reported
The filing does not name the arrested 45-year-old or the Kudu Salindu associate whose property was frozen, does not say which court or officer issued the two-week orders, and does not say whether the bus was in service when impounded. It does not state whether the Akuregoda suspicion has produced any new arrest, or whether the bus’s registered owner differs from the person police say owns it.
Ada Derana also filed on the bus seizure, leading on the Akuregoda link. Its pages have returned a CloudFront 403 to this desk for 37 consecutive days, so no publication date could be extracted and it is named here rather than cited.
Source: Hiru News, 24 October (Sinhala). The image published with the Hiru report shows uniformed officers affixing a large circular seal to a yellow private passenger bus outside a gated compound; it carries Hiru’s watermark and is not reproduced here.