The Inspector General of Police on Tuesday ordered every officer on duty at the Kalpitiya Police Station, except the Officer-in-Charge, to be transferred with immediate effect, NewsFirst reported, citing complaints over failure to perform duties and fraud and corruption.
The transferred officers have been moved to other stations within the Puttalam Division, the report said. The station’s OIC was the sole exception to the blanket order.
A station-wide reassignment leaving only the OIC in place is the most decisive single police-discipline action of the current cycle, and continues a pattern of recent transfers tied to specific complaints. Internal disciplinary moves have intensified after the arrest of five officers over a gold robbery and the wave of SLTB driver suspensions, and the IGP has previously sanctioned officers at other Western and North Western stations for procedural failures during politically sensitive cases.
Kalpitiya, an Indian Ocean fishing town on the Puttalam lagoon, has emerged as one of the more sensitive policing beats in the North Western Province in recent months. Local police have been at the centre of arrests linked to drug smuggling routes around the Kalpitiya peninsula and Mannar basin, and tourism-related friction over land and beach access has fed continuous complaints from residents and operators. NewsFirst did not name the specific incidents that triggered the blanket transfer or the number of officers affected.
The Sri Lanka Police media division did not immediately disclose whether parallel formal disciplinary inquiries have been opened against the transferred officers, or whether the OIC retains command of the unit pending an internal audit.
