The Officer-in-Charge (OIC) of the Welikada Police Station has been remanded until June 9 over an alleged scheme to extort Rs. 300,000 each from a group of Chinese nationals in exchange for releasing their passports.
The suspect was produced before the Colombo Magistrate’s Court by officers of the Colombo Central Crimes Investigation Division (CCID), the unit that took him into custody. After hearing submissions from both sides, Chief Magistrate Asanga S. Bodaragama ordered him placed in remand custody, Newswire reported.
The OIC was arrested on Tuesday in Veyangoda on suspicion of holding passports belonging to 19 Chinese nationals who had been detained recently in Rajagiriya, and of soliciting payments totalling a reported Rs. 5.7 million to return them. The arrest of a serving station OIC by a specialised police-anti-corruption unit was already a notable step inside the force; the remand now places him in the same custodial framework as the foreign detainees whose passports he allegedly withheld.
The case intersects with a wider crackdown on cyber-scam and immigration offences allegedly run from Sri Lankan suburbs by foreign nationals. In recent weeks, security agencies have detained nearly 700 foreign nationals in immigration and cybercrime operations, 37 Chinese nationals tied to an online scam in Thalangama, and six Chinese suspects at an illegal gambling club in Kollupitiya. Investigators have warned that regional cyber-scam syndicates have been shifting operations into Sri Lanka — a backdrop that has placed police custody of foreign detainees under unusual scrutiny.
The case returns to court on June 9.
