Two Chinese nationals wanted over the abduction and murder of another Chinese national at Colombo Port City have been arrested in Sigiriya, the Colombo Crime Division has said.

The two were found hiding in the Sigiriya area and taken into custody. Police said the CCD is conducting further questioning and investigations.

The case

The killing followed a clash between groups of Chinese nationals at Port City on July 23. One man was forcibly abducted during the confrontation, and his body was later recovered at a wooded location in the Eheliyagoda area, roughly 60 kilometres from Colombo.

Suspects had been arrested and remanded earlier in the case. The CCD then ran an extended investigation to trace the remaining suspects, who had fled the area.

The arrests follow a public appeal a week ago in which police released photographs of three Chinese nationals wanted in the case, warning that their tourist visas had expired and that they might attempt to leave the country illegally. Police said at the time that investigations had established all three remained in Sri Lanka.

Update, August 29: ages given, court appearance due

Ada Derana and the Daily Mirror both filed the arrests on Saturday morning, adding detail Hiru News had not carried.

The two men are aged 35 and 43, according to the Daily Mirror, and were traced to a location in Sigiriya. Ada Derana reported that they were arrested on Friday while hiding at a restaurant there, and that they were scheduled to be produced before court on Saturday. The Daily Mirror said only that they were being detained and questioned by the CCD, without mentioning a court date.

Ada Derana also framed the original incident more fully than the other two outlets, describing it as an assault on three Chinese nationals at Port City followed by the abduction and murder of one of them.

None of the three outlets named the men or said whether they are among the three whose photographs police published a week earlier.

Earlier reporting had put the number of people identified in the case at eight, of whom three were traced abroad with Interpol assistance while three were believed to be evading arrest inside Sri Lanka.

The victim entered Sri Lanka from Cambodia in April on a Suriname passport and was suspected by investigators of involvement in computer-based fraud. The case has run alongside a reported rise in crimes involving foreign nationals, with about 700 foreign nationals arrested this year in raids on scam operations.

Hiru News broke the arrests in Sinhala on Friday night; Ada Derana and the Daily Mirror followed in English on Saturday morning.

Update, August 30: court orders 24-hour detention, and the open question is answered

The two men were produced before the Hulftsdorp No. 8 Magistrate’s Court on Saturday and placed under 24-hour detention orders, NewsFirst reported on Sunday morning. That confirms the court appearance Ada Derana had said was scheduled.

NewsFirst also settles the question the earlier reports left open. The two arrested men are among the three suspects police were seeking — the same three whose photographs were published a week earlier — and officers are still trying to trace the remaining one.

Two further details are new. Police said that after the killing the suspects stayed in Sri Lanka while altering their appearances and changing their names, which is how they evaded arrest for five weeks. And the post-mortem examination found that death was caused by injuries to internal organs resulting from stab wounds — the first account of how the victim was killed to appear in any of the four outlets’ reporting.

NewsFirst placed the body’s recovery more precisely, at Karadana in the Eheliyagoda area, and named the victim as Hao Song, the man investigators identified in July as a key figure in an organised cybercrime operation who had entered Sri Lanka from Cambodia in April on a Suriname passport.

One apparent discrepancy is not one. NewsFirst dates the incident to the night of July 22, while our earlier reporting placed it in the early hours of Thursday, July 23. Both describe the same sequence: the three men went onto a bridge in Port City to fish at about 11.00 p.m. on the Wednesday, and the group that assaulted and abducted them arrived at about 2.00 a.m. NewsFirst dates the event from when it began; the earlier accounts date it from when the abduction occurred.

Sources