A lorry carrying Deepavali stock from Kataragama to Talawakele ran off the road and fell about 100 feet down a precipice in the hill country on Tuesday morning. All three men aboard jumped clear and survived.
The Bolero-type vehicle came off the road at Kirimetiya, on the Hatton–Nanu Oya stretch of the Nuwara Eliya roundabout road, at about 10:00 a.m., Hiru News reported, citing Nanu Oya Police.
The lorry was carrying a consignment of ready-made garments brought from Kataragama to be sold in Talawakele town for the coming Deepavali festival.
Police said the vehicle left the road while moving and came to rest leaning towards the slope. The three occupants jumped out at that point and escaped, according to the account they gave; the lorry then went over the edge. It was severely damaged.
No injuries were reported.
A note on the headline
Hiru’s own headline describes this as a “horrific accident” (බිහිසුණු අනතුරක්), and the phrase has carried into aggregator pickups. The newsroom’s own text does not support that reading: it records no casualties, and the only loss described is to the vehicle and its cargo. The photograph filed with the report shows the lorry lying in dense hill-country vegetation with cargo bundles scattered around it and people standing beside the wreck — consistent with the terrain and the load, and showing no casualty scene. This desk has reported the incident as the body describes it.
The stretch of road involved runs through steep tea country between Hatton and Nanu Oya, where the drop beside the carriageway is severe enough that a vehicle leaving the road has little to arrest it.