A 15-year-old girl who disappeared from a village on the western slopes of the Knuckles range several months ago has been found living in a rock cave deep in forest, with a two-month-old baby girl, after police followed up an unusual pattern of rice purchases at a village shop.
The girl was reported missing from the Meemure–Kandaketiya area of the Ududumbara police division, Hiru News reported on Saturday.
How she was found
During the inquiry, officers became suspicious of a young man who was buying noticeably more rice from a local shop each day than one person would need. Officers kept him under observation and followed him away from the village into forest well beyond the settlements.
There they found a rock cave screened with oilcloth sheeting. The girl was inside with a two-month-old infant.
Under questioning it emerged that she had given birth inside the cave. Investigators found that the baby’s umbilical cord had been cut with a sharp implement of the kind used in the kitul tapping trade.
What the filing does not say
Hiru’s report does not say whether anyone has been arrested, what offences are under investigation, where the girl and the infant were taken, or whether either has received medical attention. It does not give the exact date she was reported missing — it places the disappearance about five months before Saturday — and it does not identify who was supporting her in the cave or for how long.
Several Sri Lankan aggregator sites carried fuller accounts on Saturday, including arrests and a hospital referral. Those outlets do not meet this desk’s sourcing standard and no verified newsroom had corroborated those specific claims at the time of writing, so they are not reproduced here. This report will be updated if a verified newsroom carries them.
Sourcing and identification
Hiru News was the only verified newsroom carrying this story at the time of writing; searches of the Daily Mirror, NewsFirst and other verified rails returned nothing on it, and Ada Derana has been unreachable for several days. A search also surfaced a separate Daily Mirror report filed the same day concerning the abduction of a 12-year-old in an unrelated case — the two should not be confused.
Because the case involves a child, this desk is not reproducing the photograph distributed with the original filing, which shows the girl being escorted by officers, and is not publishing the names of the individuals or the specific household involved.