Sri Lanka recorded 1,664 murders over the three years to the end of 2025, among them 48 children and 317 women, according to the Police Performance Report for 2025.
The annual totals fell in each of the three years: 573 murders in 2023, 555 in 2024 and 536 in 2025, the Daily Mirror reported at 11.07 a.m. Colombo time on Friday. Police say they have solved approximately 93 per cent of the murder cases reported across the period.
Who the victims were
| 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All murder victims | 573 | 555 | 536 | 1,664 |
| Women | 105 | 104 | 108 | 317 |
| Children | 16 | 20 | 12 | 48 |
The three annual figures sum exactly to the stated totals in each row, and the sub-totals for women and children are internally consistent with the headline count.
The direction of travel differs by category. The overall figure declined every year, by 18 murders from 2023 to 2024 and a further 19 from 2024 to 2025 — a fall of about 6.5 per cent across the period. The number of women killed did not follow it: 105, then 104, then 108, the highest of the three years. Women were roughly 19 per cent of all murder victims across the period, and a slightly larger share in 2025 than in 2023.
Child victims moved the other way after rising: 16 in 2023, 20 in 2024 — the peak — then 12 in 2025, the lowest of the three years. The numbers are small enough that a single year’s movement should not be read as a trend.
A 2026 report is due shortly
Police Media Spokesman Assistant Superintendent of Police and Attorney-at-Law F. U. Wootler said the Police Performance Report for 2026 is expected to be released shortly.
That matters for reading the figures above: the 2025 report is a record of the three years that ended ten months ago, not a current-year count. The 93 per cent clearance rate is likewise a cumulative figure for the period and not a statement about how any individual year’s cases now stand.
Not reported
The filing does not break the figures down by province, district or police division, so the geographic distribution of the 1,664 killings is not available from this reporting. It does not say how the 48 child victims are defined by age, or give their ages.
It does not state what “solved” means for the purposes of the 93 per cent figure — whether it counts arrests, charges filed, or convictions obtained — and does not say how many of the cases have resulted in a conviction. It gives no breakdown of the relationship between victims and perpetrators, and no figure for how many of the murders of women were committed by partners or family members.
The report itself is not linked in the filing, and no total for the full report’s other crime categories is given.
Single source. A search of other verified newsrooms found no independent report of these figures at the time of writing: NewsFirst’s rail carried none, Hiru News’s rail carried none, and EconomyNext had not filed. Ada Derana could not be checked — adaderana.lk has returned an HTTP 403 block to this desk for some 49 consecutive days. The figures above are as published by the Daily Mirror from the Police Performance Report; this desk has not seen the report itself.
