A 34-year-old businessman has been arrested at Bandaranaike International Airport carrying almost four kilogrammes of crystal methamphetamine concealed inside boxes of biscuits and chocolates, NewsFirst reported.

The consignment weighed 3 kilogrammes and 994 grammes and is valued at approximately Rs. 80 million — a little over Rs. 20 million a kilogramme.

Officers of the Airport Police Narcotic Bureau made the arrest on the night of Tuesday, 29 September, acting on information from a private informant.

Hidden in 11 boxes

Police said the drug, known as “Ice”, was packed inside 11 boxes of biscuits and chocolates — a concealment method that relies on the bulk food packaging of a returning traveller passing as ordinary duty-free shopping.

The suspect is a businessman from the Jaya Mawatha area of Ratmalana.

The route

Under initial questioning the suspect said he had obtained the consignment in Oman and travelled to Katunayake via Qatar, according to NewsFirst.

Routing through a Gulf transit hub is a recurring feature of methamphetamine cases at the airport. It breaks the journey into two legs, so the passenger arrives in Colombo on a flight from a country other than the one where the drug was collected.

He was due to be produced before the Negombo Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday.

A sustained run of seizures

The arrest lands in the middle of an unusually active period for narcotics enforcement in Sri Lanka.

On 27 September the Navy seized 45.5kg of Ice and 35.7kg of heroin on a beach at Madagal in Jaffna. A far larger consignment — a container holding some 472kg of Ice — was found at the Colombo Port, and that case has since turned inward: the head of the unit that made the seizure, Senior DIG Ranmal Kodituwakku, gave a statement to the CID on Tuesday while the IGP seeks approval to transfer him and five other officers.

Katunayake itself produced a separate case a day earlier, when gold jewellery was seized from an arriving passenger.

Set against those figures, four kilogrammes is a small courier-scale load. It is also the kind of seizure that is made at the terminal rather than at sea or in a container yard, and the only one of the group in which the carrier was detained on arrival.

No further arrests have been reported, and police have not said whether the consignment was destined for a local distributor.

Hiru confirms the arrest, and differs on one detail

Hiru News filed its own account later on Wednesday, independently confirming every principal fact: the 3.994kg weight, the Rs. 80 million valuation, the 34-year-old suspect from Jaya Mawatha, Ratmalana, the arrest by the Police Narcotics Bureau on the night of the 29th, and the consignment’s origin in Oman.

The two accounts differ on how the drug was packed. NewsFirst reports 11 boxes of biscuits and chocolates; Hiru says the narcotics were divided into 10 parcels concealed inside biscuit and chocolate boxes in the suspect’s luggage. These may be counting different things — parcels of the drug versus boxes used to hide them — and neither outlet gives both numbers. Hiru also does not mention the Qatar transit leg that NewsFirst reports from the suspect’s initial questioning.

Sources

NewsFirst filed this at 7.18am Colombo time. Ada Derana also carried the arrest, but its site is currently unreachable to us and its report could not be verified or dated, so it is not cited.