A 28-year-old man who had gone to clear a leased plot of land at Nikawewa, Thanamalwila, has been found shot dead, Thanamalwila police discovered on Saturday morning.
The dead man was unmarried and lived in the Bodagama Meegaswewa area of Thanamalwila, Hiru News reported on Saturday afternoon, citing its correspondent. He is not named in the report.
Police said he went on Friday 23 October to clear a coconut plot at Nikawewa, held under a lease. When he did not return home, his father went to the land at dawn on Saturday to look for him and found his son dead of gunshot wounds. The father notified Thanamalwila police.
The investigation
A police team led by Thanamalwila Headquarters Officer-in-Charge, Inspector Thilina de Silva, went to the scene and began initial inquiries. Scene-of-crime officers and the police dog unit have been called in.
Who fired the shots, and why, has not been established. Facts are to be reported to the Wellawaya Magistrate’s Court, where a magisterial inquiry is to be held.
Context
Thanamalwila sits in the Monaragala district on the edge of the Uda Walawe belt, an area this desk has covered repeatedly for firearms offences and narcotics seizures rather than for land disputes. A shooting at Galwalayaya in the same police division in September and a 754kg cannabis seizure and arrest in October are separate matters, and nothing in Saturday’s report links this death to either.
The one detail with potential bearing on motive is that the plot was held on lease and the man had gone there to clear it. Land held under lease and being cleared is land whose occupation is changing, and that is a category in which disputes arise. The report does not make that connection, and neither does this one: it is noted only because it is the sole circumstance the police account supplies beyond the sequence of events.
The photograph published with the report shows uniformed officers holding a tarpaulin over the covered body on open scrub ground inside a taped cordon, which is consistent with the account of a body found in the open on cleared land. It is not reproduced here.
Not reported
The report does not name the dead man, give the calibre or type of weapon, state how many shots were fired, or say whether a weapon or cartridge cases were recovered. It does not say whether a post-mortem has been ordered or scheduled, whether anyone has been arrested or is being sought, or whether the lease was the subject of any dispute. It does not report an estimated time of death — only that he went to the land on Friday and was found at dawn on Saturday.
On sourcing: no other verified newsroom had filed on this death at the time of writing. Checks of the Daily Mirror’s breaking-news listing and NewsFirst’s Saturday index returned nothing on it.
Sources: A 28-year-old youth was shot dead while clearing land in Thanamalwila — Hiru News, October 24 (Sinhala).
