The suspect wanted in connection with the double murder of an elderly couple in Dikoya, Hatton, is yet to be re-arrested and remains at large, the Police Media Division said on Thursday, contradicting earlier media reports that he had been taken back into custody.
According to the police, the suspect had been admitted to the Kandy National Hospital on Wednesday (27) due to illness while in remand custody. He escaped from there while under the supervision of prison officials and has not been traced since.
The police specifically refuted media accounts — including an earlier report that he had been re-arrested in Bogawantalawa — clarifying that no fresh arrest has been made following his hospital escape. The clarification reverses one of the central facts that circulated through Wednesday’s news cycle.
The suspect is accused of murdering a husband and wife in the Hatton-Dickoya town area before fleeing with gold jewellery. The couple, who lived inside the shop they ran in the town, were found dead on Friday (22), prompting a CCTV-based public appeal before his arrest last Thursday and remand.
The escape and the conflicting accounts of a re-arrest are likely to keep custodial procedures for remand prisoners moved to hospitals under fresh scrutiny, alongside questions over how a suspect already in police custody was able to slip his guards inside a major teaching hospital.
