Police have suspended the use, transfer or sale of a house valued at about Rs. 15 million that they say belongs to an alleged organised crime figure known as “Midigama Chuti”, following an investigation by the Illegal Assets Investigation Division.
The man is named in both reports as Rajapaksha Pathirange Prabath Madushanka. NewsFirst reported that the property is believed to have been acquired using proceeds generated through drug trafficking, and attributed the investigation to the Illegal Assets Investigation Division of the Criminal Investigation Department.
Ada Derana said the division has taken steps to temporarily suspend the use, transfer or sale of the residence, and that the Rs. 15 million valuation covers both the house and the land on which it stands. It did not repeat the claim about the source of the funds.
Detention and pending cases
NewsFirst reports material Ada Derana does not carry: that Madushanka is currently being held by the Criminal Investigation Department under detention orders, and that court proceedings against him are already under way in connection with murder and drug trafficking cases.
Ada Derana’s report is confined to the property measure and says nothing about his custody status or any pending prosecution. Neither outlet reports when the matter will be placed before a court, or whether a forfeiture application will follow the suspension.
The two reports differ on the name and the place
The outlets render both the alias and the location differently, and neither acknowledges the other.
NewsFirst places the house in the Pathagama area of Midigama and writes the alias as “Midigama Chuti”. Ada Derana places it at Pathegama in Weligama and writes the alias as “Midigama Chooti”. It also spells the given name Madusanka in its body text, against NewsFirst’s Madushanka.
Sri Lankan outlets routinely differ on the transliteration of Sinhala place and personal names, and the two locality descriptions may be the same place given at different levels of detail rather than a genuine conflict. This report uses NewsFirst’s spellings, which match the form used most often across our archive.
Context
The measure is the latest in a sustained push against property held by organised crime and drug trafficking suspects. Police said in August that assets worth about Rs. 6 billion had been frozen across 113 investigations since September 2024, a total that included 55 houses valued at Rs. 1,437 million.
The same division opened asset investigations into 25 organised crime and drug figures in August, examining holdings police allege were bought with the proceeds of crime, with facts to be reported to court before further action.
Update (September 5): the order runs 14 days, and the money moved through eZ Cash
The Daily Mirror reported the order a day later with two details the first two accounts lacked.
The freeze was issued under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and runs for 14 days, effective from 4 September. And the investigation began with information received by the Inspector General of Police about a person living in Pathegama, Weligama who was allegedly running drug trafficking through the eZ Cash mobile money platform. The inquiry was carried out by the Custodial Investigation Unit of the Illegal Assets Investigation Division, which concluded the house was bought with the proceeds.
The Daily Mirror does not name the individual or use either form of the alias, and does not acknowledge the earlier reports. Its account otherwise matches them on every specific — the same division, the same Rs. 15 million valuation, the same locality of Pathegama in Weligama, and the same allegation that the house was bought with drug money — and the effective date is the day the first two outlets reported the measure.
That eZ Cash appears again is notable. The same division froze an Athurugiriya house, six bank accounts and a car in May after tracing drug-linked deposits through eZ Cash wallets belonging to a Borella couple. That is a separate case, but the platform has now surfaced as the laundering channel in two unrelated asset investigations this year.
The 14-day duration also frames the earlier open question about what follows: the order is a holding measure, and something further — an extension or a forfeiture application — must be sought before it lapses. No outlet reports which.
