The body of a 46-year-old father of two has been found in a water channel at Bogawanthalawa, after he set out to walk home from a relative’s funeral the previous night, police say.
The man, a resident of Chapelton Estate, Bogawanthalawa, was found on Saturday morning (31) in a channel that carries water into the Kesselgamu Oya, Hiru News reported at 10.23 a.m. Colombo time, citing Bogawanthalawa Police.
He had attended a relative’s funeral on Friday night (30) and was making his way home on foot when he fell into the channel and died, according to the police account.
The investigation
Police describe the fall as unexplained. The filing does not allege foul play, and no one has been arrested.
Following a scene inspection by the Hatton Magistrate, the body is being referred to the Judicial Medical Officer at Dickoya Base Hospital for a post-mortem examination.
That sequence — a magistrate’s inspection at the scene followed by a judicial medical post-mortem — is the standard procedure in Sri Lanka for a sudden death whose cause has not been established, and does not by itself indicate suspicion of a crime.
Not reported
Hiru’s filing does not name the deceased, give the time at which he was last seen, or say who found the body. It does not state how far the funeral house was from his home, whether he was walking alone, or whether the channel was in spate on Friday night — the hill country has seen sustained heavy rain and landslide warnings through late October, which would bear on how a fall into a fast-flowing channel ended in death. No post-mortem finding has been released.
This desk found no other verified newsroom carrying the story at the time of writing; the Daily Mirror breaking-news listing did not include it, and Ada Derana’s site has returned HTTP 403 errors to this desk for roughly 50 consecutive days.