Sri Lanka Police have rejected claims that the Special Task Force (STF) is accepting a fleet of motorcycles from Avant Garde Maritime Services, calling the reports “completely false and baseless.”
Social media posts circulating over the weekend alleged that Avant Garde had committed to providing the STF with 50 motorcycles with 450cc engines free of charge, along with a 15-year maintenance package. In a statement issued on Tuesday, the police said no such arrangement exists and urged the public not to be misled by inaccurate information.
The denial is sensitive because of Avant Garde’s political and legal history. The private maritime-security firm was at the centre of one of the country’s highest-profile arms-storage cases after a 2015 seizure of a floating armoury off Galle. Successive investigations examined the company’s contracts with state agencies and the chain of command under which its weapons and assets were held. Any suggestion that Avant Garde is now equipping a state police unit would revive long-standing questions about the boundary between private-security contractors and public law enforcement.
Tuesday’s statement is the second high-profile police clarification issued in a single day. Earlier, Police Media Spokesman ASP F. U. Wootler rejected claims of a bomb plot linked to the weekend arrest of an associate of organised-crime figure “Kanjipani Imran.” Both denials came on the seventh anniversary of the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, as security agencies warn of heightened misinformation targeting public-event timings.
