Twenty-eight people including three women were arrested during a joint raid on a social media-organised party in the Ponnaduwa area of Ambalangoda on Saturday night, Newswire reported.
The operation was carried out jointly by officers from Ambalangoda Police and the Police Special Task Force (STF) after the gathering was advertised on social media. Police recovered 225 milligrams of cocaine, 8.125 grams of methamphetamine “ice,” 2.4 grams of cannabis and a quantity of illegal cigarettes at the site, the report said.
The suspects are aged between 18 and 44 and are residents of Ambalangoda, Balapitiya, Homagama and Beruwala, indicating attendees travelled to the southern coastal town from across the Western and Southern Provinces. Further investigations are under way.
The raid fits a recurring pattern of STF-led suburban-party crackdowns over the past several months, in which Facebook and Instagram-organised gatherings have been broken up after intelligence flagged narcotics use. The cluster has now produced repeated multi-arrest operations in coastal and suburban Western Province towns, including a 37-Chinese-national online-scam arrest in Thalangama on May 2 and earlier multi-substance seizures in the Balapitiya–Ambalangoda corridor.
Ambalangoda has surfaced in crime reporting over recent months as part of a broader Southern Province enforcement push. The town sits on the Galle Road south of Bentota and is a recurring weekend-party destination during the off-season tourist months.
The Ponnaduwa raid follows a similar STF-led pattern to recent narcotics enforcement actions, including a seizure of 26.770 kg of cannabis at Udawalawa on May 29 by the Embilipitiya Criminal Investigations Unit.
Source: Newswire.
