A 33-year-old man held on remand at Kalutara Prison was found dead on Sunday afternoon, about two days after he was imprisoned over a drug possession case, the Prisons Department says.
The man was a resident of the Monaragala area, Hiru News reported.
The Prisons Department media spokesman said he was found in a disused building adjacent to the inmates’ ward, and that the death is being treated as a suicide. Investigating officers have said they suspect drug dependence was a factor.
This report omits the method described in the source filing, in line with standard practice on reporting suicide.
The sequence
By the Prisons Department’s account, the man had been remanded roughly two days earlier in connection with a drug possession incident. He had not been convicted; he was being held pending the case.
That short interval — from committal to death — is the fact most likely to matter in any inquiry, because it is the window in which a newly admitted remandee is assessed, classified and supervised. Hiru’s filing does not say whether any assessment was carried out, nor whether the disused building adjacent to the ward was supposed to be accessible to inmates.
The wider context
This is the second death inside a Sri Lankan prison reported in two days. On Saturday, an inmate was shot dead during an escape attempt at Dumbara Prison.
It also comes on the same day that SLPP parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa argued that deaths in state custody cannot be treated as isolated incidents, pointing to the Negombo prison deaths and the Kobeigane custody death and noting that forensic reports in those cases remain outstanding.
This desk notes the sequence without asserting a connection between the cases. They are separate incidents at separate institutions, and nothing in Hiru’s filing links them.
Sourcing and what is not reported
This account rests on a single verified newsroom. No other verified outlet this desk could reach had filed on the Kalutara death; Ada Derana continues to return a CloudFront block.
The man has not been named. Hiru does not report when exactly he was admitted, which court remanded him, what quantity or substance the possession case involved, or when he was last seen alive. It does not say whether a magistrate has been notified, whether a judicial medical examination has been ordered, whether the Human Rights Commission has been informed, or whether any prison officer has been suspended or questioned. It gives no account of how he came to be in a disused building, and reports no comment from the family.