Sri Lanka Customs and the Police have found a consignment of metal scrap, including iron, inside an export container whose customs declaration said it held rice, Customs Spokesman Chandana Punchihewa said.

The container was opened on Thursday during a joint examination at the TRICO Export Facilitation Centre, off the port access road from Ingurukade Junction in Colombo. It contained no rice at all.

Update, 1 October: the cargo identified, two arrests

Late on Thursday evening, NewsFirst reported that the metal in the container is 179 empty artillery shells, and that the consignment was being sent to India.

NewsFirst said the shells were concealed inside an iron container that had been prepared for export and was being held in a port yard. The search was carried out by officers of the Central Crime Investigation Bureau (CCIB) together with Sri Lanka Customs, acting on a tip-off.

Two suspects have been arrested, police said.

That answers three of the questions left open earlier in the day — what the metal was, where it was going, and whether anyone had been detained — and it changes the character of the case. A mis-declared scrap shipment is a customs matter. Spent ordnance moving out of the country under a false declaration is a different order of problem, and explains why a police criminal-investigation unit rather than Customs alone was running the search.

Two points of caution. The shells are described as empty — that is, fired or otherwise expended casings, not live munitions, and no account suggests explosives were found. And although the quantity, destination and arrests are now reported, neither the exporter, the consignee in India, nor the charges under consideration have been named. No official has said where 179 shell casings were collected, though spent ordnance from Sri Lanka’s civil war has turned up in scrap-metal supply chains before.

Stopped before it left

Punchihewa said the container had been prepared for export under a declaration identifying its contents as rice. Acting on a tip-off, authorities detained it before it could be shipped and notified the Police.

The Police then produced the matter before court and sought permission to examine the consignment. The court directed Customs to carry out the inspection with Police officers present — which is how the joint examination on Thursday came about.

Investigations are continuing, the Daily Mirror reported.

What has not been said

The following reflects reporting from earlier on Thursday, before the cargo was identified and the arrests were reported.

Neither account identifies the exporter, the declared destination, the weight or value of the scrap, or whether anyone has been arrested. Nor do they state what offence is under consideration.

That last point matters for reading the case. A false export declaration is a customs offence in its own right, but scrap metal is also a controlled export in Sri Lanka, and mis-declaring cargo is a recognised method of moving goods past both export controls and duty. Which of those is in play here is not established by the reporting, and officials have not said.

The Daily Mirror and Newswire both attribute their accounts to the same Customs spokesman, so on the detail they are one official source carried by two newsrooms rather than two independent confirmations.

On the third source. Hiru News filed separately while the inspection was still in progress, reporting only that Customs was examining a suspicious export container at the Trico EFC near the Ingurukade junction that day. Its account independently confirms the container, the location and the inspection — but it was published before the outcome was known and says nothing about rice, metal scrap or the declaration. It should not be read as corroborating the finding.

Sources