The transfer of inmates to the reopened Bogambara Prison in Kandy has begun, with 100 inmates already moved to the facility, Prisons Media Spokesperson Chenaka Palletanne said.
About 1,000 inmates from the Colombo Remand Prison and the Magazine Remand Prison will be transferred to Bogambara on a temporary basis, Palletanne told NewsFirst.
The scale of the problem
The spokesperson put the current remand population at roughly 25,000 people across prisons islandwide, out of a total prison population of about 36,000. On those figures, remand suspects — people held before trial, not convicted prisoners — account for close to seven in ten of everyone held in Sri Lankan prisons.
The 1,000 inmates earmarked for Bogambara represent about 4% of the remand population, which puts the limits of the move in perspective: it relieves pressure on two Colombo prisons rather than resolving national overcrowding.
A date that moved twice
The start of transfers closes a timeline that slipped repeatedly. The Prisons Department said on 12 August that inmates would be moved “next week.” When LankaNewz reported on the department’s position on 12 September, Commissioner General Prasad Hemantha was again saying transfers would begin the following week, with renovation 90% complete — a month after the same undertaking.
Transfers have now begun roughly seven weeks after the first promised date.
Bogambara, which closed in 2014 and was partly redeveloped as a heritage and leisure site, was re-established as a working prison by extraordinary gazette in July 2026 to ease congestion in the system.
