A 15-year-old girl who had been missing for about five months has been found in a rock cave in forest near the western slope of the Knuckles range, together with a two-month-old infant she gave birth to there, police said. Two men have been arrested.
The girl and the baby were found in the Meemure and Kandaketiya area of the Ududumbara police division, Hiru News reported on Saturday evening.
A shop’s rice sales led police to the cave
Members of the girl’s family had reported her missing to Ududumbara police, and an investigation was opened under the officer-in-charge, Chief Inspector Thusitha Dombagammanage.
During those inquiries officers became suspicious of a young man who was buying more rice from a local shop each day than one person would need. Police kept him under observation and followed him to a forested area away from any settlement, where they found a rock cave covered over with oilcloth. The girl was inside with the two-month-old baby.
A 23-year-old man said to be the baby’s father was arrested, and the girl and infant were taken into police custody. A 36-year-old relative of his, alleged to have assisted him, was also arrested.
Police questioning established that the girl gave birth inside the cave. Investigators found that the infant’s umbilical cord had been cut with a sharp implement of the kind used in kithul tapping.
The minister: “as a mother, I too was deeply shaken”
Minister of Women and Child Affairs Saroja Savithri Paulraj issued a special statement on Sunday morning calling the case deeply shocking, Hiru News reported. She said that as a mother she had herself been deeply shaken by it.
It was a relief, she said, that the lives of both the girl and the newborn are now safe. She said instructions have already been issued to the relevant agencies to carry out, promptly and continuously, every intervention the government needs to make to secure the physical and mental health of both children and their future wellbeing.
The minister said the case should not be treated as an isolated one. Economic, social and political complexities are leaving children exposed in a variety of ways, she said, and the gradual weakening of the relationship and communication that ought to exist between parents and children is one factor behind incidents of this kind.
A trend has emerged, she said, in which children are becoming unsafe within the very environment closest to them, which ought to be the safest. Building children’s confidence that they are secure near their parents, under any circumstances, is essential, and creating a safe environment and open conversation within the family would substantially reduce dangerous incidents of this kind. State institutions and others dealing with at-risk children, she added, must become closer to the public, more easily approachable and more trustworthy.
A new policy from 2027
The Ministry of Women and Child Affairs plans to implement a new “alternative care policy” from 2027 for children who become unsafe, the minister said. Preliminary work, including securing the necessary budgetary provision, is already under way.
Safeguarding children’s security and rights is a responsibility of society as a whole, she said, asking all citizens to act more sensitively and attentively towards the country’s children.
The two filings differ on the infant’s age
The police account describes a two-month-old infant and a disappearance of about five months. The minister’s statement refers to the girl being found with a newborn after an unsafe birth.
These are the same outlet on consecutive days. The police version is the more specific and is the one followed here; the ministerial statement appears to use “newborn” loosely rather than to assert a different timeline.
Not reported
Neither filing states what charges the two men face, whether either has been produced before a magistrate, or what court is handling the case. Neither gives the girl’s current medical condition beyond the minister’s assurance that both are safe, nor says where the two are now being cared for or what custody arrangements apply to the infant. Neither explains how the girl came to be in the cave, nor what was done during the five months the family’s missing-person complaint was open.
Neither filing sets out the terms of the planned alternative care policy, the budget attached to it, or how it would differ from existing child protection arrangements.
This desk has not named the girl, her locality in detail, or any family member, and has not reproduced identifying material.
A note on sourcing
Single verified newsroom. Both filings are from Hiru News, so this story carries one verified source rather than two. The case has been carried by several Sri Lankan aggregator sites, which under this desk’s rules do not count toward credibility and have not been used — their accounts also place the location in a district other than the one Hiru’s Sinhala filing specifies. Ada Derana published the ministerial statement but could not be fetched: adaderana.lk has returned an HTTP 403 block to this desk for some 63 consecutive days. Daily Mirror and NewsFirst had not filed on the case at the time of writing.
