An Indian national has been arrested at Katunayake airport carrying a consignment of narcotics that Customs values at Rs 456 million, Hiru News reports.
The filing, published at 11.32 p.m. Colombo time, says the man was taken into custody at Bandaranaike International Airport with drugs worth Rs 456 million.
Sri Lanka Customs is quoted as saying the suspect was carrying:
| Item | Quantity |
|---|---|
| Cocaine | 5 kg |
| Narcotic pills | 13 kg — about 23,000 tablets |
A discrepancy inside the filing
Hiru’s own headline and its English URL both put the haul at a lower figure than its body does. The Sinhala headline reads කෝටි 45 — 45 crore, or Rs 450 million — and the English slug renders that as “Rs 450 million.” The body text gives රුපියල් මිලියන 456, Rs 456 million.
The gap is a rounding of the headline figure, not a contradiction of fact: 45 crore is 450 million, and the body’s 456 million is the more precise number. This article uses the body figure. Readers should expect to see Rs 450 million quoted elsewhere from the same filing.
Not reported
The filing does not name the suspect or give an age, does not say which flight he arrived on or where he travelled from, and does not describe how the consignment was concealed or found. It does not break the Rs 456 million down between the cocaine and the pills, give weights more precise than whole kilogrammes, identify what the tablets contain, or say whether the case has been handed to the Police Narcotics Bureau.
This is a separate seizure from the Rs 60 million in narcotics found in nine parcels at the Central Mail Exchange, also reported on 28 October.
A note on sourcing. Ada Derana has filed on the same seizure, but adaderana.lk has returned a CloudFront 403 to this desk for 47 consecutive days and the filing could not be retrieved or dated, so it is not cited. Daily Mirror, NewsFirst and Colombo Gazette had not filed on the seizure at the time of writing.
