Sri Lanka’s Police Narcotics Bureau says 310,200 people were arrested for drug offences in the twelve months from 31 October last year, a tally that includes 85 members of the armed forces and 24 police officers it describes as directly involved in trafficking.
The bureau released the figures covering the period from 31 October 2025 to the present, Hiru News reported at 9:20 a.m. Colombo time on Sunday.
The breakdown
| Category | Arrests |
|---|---|
| All drug offences in the period | 310,200 |
| Youths aged 18–21 held over ‘ICE’ | 4,238 |
| Principal distribution-level traffickers | 1,043 |
| Tri-forces personnel said to be directly involved in trafficking | 85 |
| Police officers said to be directly involved in trafficking | 24 |
| Schoolchildren said to be actively engaged in trafficking | 50 |
‘ICE’ is the local term for crystal methamphetamine, which has displaced heroin as the principal concern of Sri Lankan narcotics enforcement over the past two years.
The bureau’s figure for officers of the state is the most pointed element of the release: 109 serving members of the armed forces and the police are said to have been arrested for direct involvement in trafficking, rather than for possession or use.
How the number compares
The 310,200 total is consistent in scale with this site’s earlier reporting on the same enforcement drive. Police reported 239,384 arrests over nine months in July, a rate that annualises to roughly 320,000, and 531,116 arrests since the government took office in an August accounting covering a longer period.
The period in this release — beginning 31 October 2025 — is also close to the window used for an earlier police statement that 9,105 children and young people were arrested for drug offences in a year, which counted from 30 October 2025. The two sets measure different populations and are not in conflict: the 9,105 figure covers children and youth arrested for drug offences generally, while the 50 schoolchildren cited here are described specifically as active in trafficking. Those are different tests, and the smaller number should not be read as a revision of the larger one.
Not reported
The filing does not say how many of the 310,200 arrests resulted in charges, prosecutions or convictions, which is the figure that would indicate what the enforcement drive has achieved rather than its volume. It gives no quantity of drugs seized, no breakdown by substance and no geographic distribution.
It does not say what became of the 85 service personnel and 24 police officers — whether they have been charged, interdicted, discharged or returned to duty — nor which of the three armed services they came from. It does not state the ages of the 50 schoolchildren or what became of them, and it does not name an officer of the bureau as the source of the statement.
Single verified source. These figures were carried by Hiru News, a verified newsroom, on Sunday morning. No other verified Sri Lankan outlet had filed on the release at the time of writing: the Daily Mirror breaking-news listing, the NewsFirst rail and a search across verified newsrooms were all checked. Ada Derana could not be reached — its CloudFront block has now persisted for roughly fifty days. Bureau statistics of this kind are usually picked up more widely later in the day.
