The carcass of a wild tusker has been found in scrub near Kayangollewa tank in the Meeminnawala area of Kahatagasdigiliya, with its left tusk cut away, Hiru News reported on Sunday evening.
Officers of the Kahatagasdigiliya Wildlife Office found the body in wooded ground beside a paddy field adjoining the tank. They recorded that the animal’s left tusk was missing and said they suspect it was cut off and carried away. The officers also assessed that some time had passed since the elephant died.
Investigations have been opened jointly by the Kahatagasdigiliya Wildlife Office, Divulwewa Police and the Army.
What the second filing adds — and what it does not settle
The Daily Mirror, reporting the same discovery, says the elephant was “reportedly shot dead” and places the killing around two days ago. Its filing adds that residents in the area suspect the dead animal is the tusker known as ‘Lankeswara’.
Both points are carried as unconfirmed. The Hiru filing does not state a cause of death at all, and neither newsroom reports an official finding on how the animal died. The Daily Mirror says plainly that authorities have yet to confirm the identity of the elephant or the circumstances of its death. This desk is therefore recording the shooting and the name as claims under investigation, not as established facts.
The protection list, and a discrepancy worth noting
The Daily Mirror reports that the dead elephant is not among the 13 elephants previously identified for special protection — and attributes that list to the Government.
The list of 13 this desk has previously reported was published on 22 October by Wild Tuskers of Sri Lanka, a conservation organisation, at a press conference in Colombo, naming Agbo among those needing the most critical attention. Whether the Government has since adopted that list, or maintains a separate one, is not established by either filing, and this desk does not assume the two are the same.
Context
The killing lands in a run of tusker deaths and disappearances. The tusker Kavantissa was shot dead on 16 October. Days later the Opposition Leader told Parliament that Mahasen, believed to carry the largest tusks in the country, had gone missing — a claim the Department of Wildlife Conservation pushed back on, saying an absence does not necessarily mean harm has come to an animal.
Kahatagasdigiliya itself produced an enforcement case only a day earlier: a man was fined Rs 310,000 over a trap gun set to injure a wild elephant near the Kokebe Forest Reserve boundary, in the same divisional secretariat division. Parliament was told in October that 455 wild elephants died in 2025.
Not reported. Neither filing gives the elephant’s estimated age, the length or value of the missing tusk, whether a post-mortem has been carried out, or whether any suspect has been identified. Neither explains why only one tusk was taken. No statement from the Department of Wildlife Conservation’s head office or the Environment Ministry is recorded in the material this desk retrieved.
Sourcing note: two verified newsrooms carry the discovery and agree on the location, the removed tusk and the opening of an investigation. Ada Derana also carried an item on a tusker killing in Anuradhapura, but the site has returned HTTP 403 to this desk for some weeks — on browser-agent fetches and through Jina alike — so it could not be fetched or dated and is not cited here.