Sri Lanka Police have recovered a T-56 assault rifle and ammunition at a cinnamon estate in Kiralagahawela, Meetiyagoda, in connection with the 2023 killing of Police Inspector Balendra, Newswire reported on Tuesday.
The 38-year-old suspect, a Meetiyagoda resident, had been arrested by the Central Crime Investigation Bureau on Saturday initially on ICE narcotics charges. Subsequent questioning led officers to a weapons cache concealed at the cinnamon estate on Monday, which yielded one T-56 rifle, 15 live rounds and a single spent cartridge casing.
Police said investigators are now examining whether the recovered rifle was used in the Inspector’s killing. Ballistics tests are under way and the suspect remains in custody under detention orders.
NewsFirst reported on Sunday that the man taken into custody is the motorcyclist who allegedly accompanied the gunman during the assassination. The broadcaster said the suspect was arrested in the Meetiyagoda area, where police recovered a T-56 assault rifle, ammunition and a magazine buried in the garden of his home.
Inspector Balendra was shot in 2023 while leading anti-underworld operations in the Southern Province. NewsFirst placed the killing on September 9, 2023 in the Devenigoda area of Rathgama and identified the officer as Dedimuni Balendra, aged 47, formerly Officer-in-Charge of the Elpitiya Crimes Division. Newswire on Tuesday placed the shooting in the Karagoda area of Galle on October 9, 2023. His elder brother was injured in the same shooting. Three days after the original attack, a suspect linked to it was killed during a gun battle with the Special Task Force in the Thelwatta area of Meetiyagoda.
T-56 rifles have surfaced repeatedly in weapons recoveries along the southern coastal belt, where police have intensified crackdowns on organised crime networks in the Galle, Hambantota and Matara districts under the Rata Ekata national anti-narcotics drive. The same district saw a May 11 beheading of the main suspect in a 2025 Ambalantota triple murder, underlining continued lethal score-settling between rival networks.
