A suspect operating an unlicensed Ayurveda shop on Old Bazaar Street in Nuwara Eliya has been arrested with 3,755 cannabis-infused “Madana Modaka” pills allegedly prepared for sale to schoolchildren, Ada Derana reported.
Officers of the Nuwara Eliya Police Anti-Vice Unit conducted the raid on Sunday afternoon (8 June). The shop, which was operating without a valid licence from the Ayurveda Department, had reportedly been prioritising the sale of Madana Modaka pills under the guise of Ayurveda medicine, with youths frequently visiting the premises to purchase them.
The raid was conducted on prior intelligence specifically flagging the suspect’s targeting of school students, Ada Derana said. The arrested suspect and the seized stock of pills are to be produced before the Nuwara Eliya Magistrate’s Court.
Madana Modaka is a traditional Ayurveda preparation marketed as a herbal aphrodisiac in licensed form, but unregulated variants are routinely cut with cannabis or other controlled substances and sold informally through small herbal-medicine shops. The volume seized — almost 4,000 pills — and the schoolchildren targeting put this case at the upper end of single-shop seizures in the central hill country this cycle. The case also lands as the National Coordinating Committee’s “Clean Sri Lanka” school drug-prevention pilot continues to roll out across the school network.
