The Police Special Task Force has arrested a woman it describes as the principal in-country trafficker for the drug network run by Asanka Chanaka Fonseka, known as “Badowita Asanka”, who police say is an organised crime figure living abroad.
The arrest was made on Sunday outside a house on Abeysekara Road, Mount Lavinia, within the Dehiwala police division, and followed an intelligence tip-off, Hiru News reported.
Officers say they recovered 62 grams and 600 milligrams of heroin in her possession.
What police say she was doing
Under initial questioning, the STF says, the suspect disclosed that she had acted as the main trafficker in Sri Lanka for the network directed by “Badowita Asanka” from overseas, and had run that operation over a long period.
The suspect and the seized heroin were handed to Dehiwala Police for further investigation and legal proceedings.
Who “Badowita Asanka” is said to be
Police describe Fonseka as a large-scale drug trafficker and organised crime figure based abroad — one of a set of Sri Lankan network heads who police say continue to direct domestic distribution from outside the country.
This is not the first arrest attributed to that network. In August, an associate of “Badowita Asanka” was arrested with crystal methamphetamine.
The claim that this suspect was the network’s principal local operator is a notably higher one than in that earlier case, and it rests on what police say she said in initial questioning — an untested account at this stage, not a finding of any court.
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 arrest; Ada Derana remains blocked by CloudFront.
The suspect has not been named, and her age and residence are not given. Hiru does not report whether she has been produced before a magistrate or remanded, what charges are contemplated, whether anyone else was arrested in the same operation, or how the quantity recovered — 62.6 grams — relates to the scale of distribution police attribute to her. It does not say where Fonseka is believed to be, whether any extradition or Interpol process is in train, or how long the network has been under STF surveillance.
A note on names: this desk renders the alias as “Badowita Asanka”, the form used consistently in our previous reporting. Hiru’s Sinhala filing prefixes the full name with an element this desk has not been able to resolve reliably into English, and it has therefore been left out rather than guessed at.