Sri Lanka Police screened 26,346 individuals during island-wide operations conducted on Saturday and detained 548 on suspicion, the latest 24-hour tally in the IGP-directed anti-crime and anti-drug sweep, Ada Derana reported.
Of those screened, 147 persons were directly identified as being involved in criminal activities. Officers also took into custody 212 individuals against whom outstanding warrants had been issued and 158 named in open warrants.
A further 135 drivers were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol, and 83 motorists were detained for reckless driving. Legal action was initiated against 3,996 individuals for various other traffic-related violations.
The Saturday tally is the next phase of the operation that produced 593 arrests and 27,042 checks the day before, with the IGP-directed sweeps running consecutively through the weekend ahead of Vesak. The post-Avurudu programme has been running since mid-April, and feeds into the broader Rata Ekata anti-narcotics operation that has now logged more than 156,000 arrests since October 2025.
Police did not break out the 548 figure by offence category beyond the warrant and traffic counts, nor name the divisions where the largest tallies were recorded. Saturday’s checks were lower than Friday’s 27,042 and the arrest total slightly down from 593, suggesting a sequential roll-out across police divisions rather than a single nationwide blitz.
Source: Ada Derana.
