A man has been arrested and placed under a detention order after a cache of five firearms, two live hand grenades and 3,843 rounds of ammunition was found inside a cinema building on the Kirindiwela–Hanwella road.
The suspect is Charith Kanishka Rajakaruna, a resident of Millathe, NewsFirst reported at 10.42 a.m. on Sunday. The arrest was made by the Colombo Crime Division (CCD), Hiru News reported earlier the same morning.
Police have since obtained a detention order to hold and question him, Hiru reported at 11.03 a.m., saying the order was taken out to allow further investigation.
What was recovered
NewsFirst published an itemised police inventory:
| Item | Quantity |
|---|---|
| Foreign-manufactured pistols | 2 |
| Revolver | 1 |
| Foreign-manufactured repeater firearm | 1 |
| Foreign-manufactured 12-bore firearm | 1 |
| Live hand grenades | 2 |
| .22 calibre rounds | 3,083 |
| 12-bore rounds | 398 |
| 9 mm rounds | 278 |
| .32 calibre rounds | 49 |
| 16-bore rounds | 35 |
The ammunition items sum to exactly 3,843 rounds. Hiru had described the stock as “close to 4,000,” so the two accounts reconcile — the itemised figure confirms the round number rather than contradicting it.
Two things the itemisation reveals
First, there is one more firearm than Hiru reported. Hiru listed two pistols, a revolver and a repeater — four weapons. NewsFirst’s list adds a 12-bore firearm, and its own lead says five. The 398 live 12-bore rounds in the inventory correspond to that fifth weapon, which is some corroboration that the longer list is the complete one.
Second, the ammunition does not map cleanly onto the weapons. The .22 calibre rounds alone account for 80 per cent of the stock (3,083 of 3,843), and no .22 firearm is named in the inventory. The repeater’s calibre is not stated in either filing, and a .22 repeater is a common firearm type in Sri Lanka — so that block may well belong to it, and this desk is not treating it as unaccounted for.
The 35 live 16-bore rounds are harder to place. None of the five listed firearms is a 16-bore; the shotgun in the recovery is a 12-bore, and 16-bore shells do not fit it. On the published inventory, those rounds match no recovered weapon.
Why the quantity is the story
A handful of illegal firearms turns up regularly in Sri Lankan police reporting. An ammunition stock of nearly 3,900 rounds does not. The disproportion between five weapons and several thousand rounds points to storage rather than possession for use — a holding point rather than an individual’s weapon. The presence of rounds in five different calibres, at least one of which fits nothing recovered, reinforces that reading: this looks like an accumulated stock rather than a matched kit.
Hiru reports that the CCD is investigating both the arrested man and the background of what it describes as an organised stock of firearms. That characterisation is the police’s, and no filing has yet connected the cache to a named group, a prior case or a specific criminal network.
The two live hand grenades are the element that most clearly separates this from a conventional illegal-firearms recovery. Grenades are military ordnance and have featured in Sri Lankan organised-crime cases involving gang attacks rather than in ordinary weapons offences.
The location
The cinema sits on the Kirindiwela–Hanwella road. The two towns are in the Gampaha and Colombo districts respectively, on a route connecting the outer Colombo suburbs to the interior — which is why coverage of the recovery has variously been filed under either town’s name. A disused or lightly used public building is an unusual storage site, and no filing explains how the cache came to be there or whether the cinema’s operators were aware of it.
One discrepancy between the two newsrooms
The suspect’s age differs. Hiru gives 38; NewsFirst gives 37, in both its headline and its body. Both filings are from Sunday morning, roughly twenty minutes apart, and neither carries a date of birth. The two outlets agree on every other particular — the location, the arresting unit, the grenades, and an ammunition stock of the same order — so this reads as a one-year transcription difference in a police statement rather than a dispute about who was arrested.
Not reported
No filing states Rajakaruna’s occupation, his relationship to the cinema, or whether he owns, manages or merely had access to the building. Neither the name of the cinema nor whether it is still operating has been reported.
Police have not said how the CCD learned of the cache, whether the recovery followed a tip-off, surveillance or another arrest, or how long the weapons are believed to have been stored there. The origin of the grenades, where the foreign-manufactured weapons were made, and whether any has been linked by ballistics to an earlier shooting are all unreported. Neither filing gives the calibre of the repeater, which is the detail that would settle whether the .22 stock has a matching weapon.
No court appearance has been reported. The detention order permits questioning rather than resolving the case, and no filing says for how long it runs or what charges are contemplated.
A note on sourcing. This account now rests on three verified newsrooms — Hiru, NewsFirst and the Daily Mirror — which is what makes the inventory and age cross-checks above possible. Ada Derana has also filed on the recovery, but adaderana.lk has returned a CloudFront 403 to this desk for thirty consecutive days (re-tested on 19 October: HTTP 403, 919-byte body), so no publication date could be extracted from its report and it could not be cited under this site’s sourcing rules.
Update, 19 October: a third newsroom dates the search, and confirms the tip-off
The Daily Mirror filed its own account at 8.09 a.m. on Sunday under a Gampaha dateline, reporting the recovery — about half an hour before Hiru’s second filing and two and a half hours before NewsFirst’s. It answers two of the questions this article recorded as unreported and settles a third point.
The search was on Saturday evening. The Daily Mirror says it was conducted “yesterday evening (17)” — so the recovery happened on the evening of 17 October, roughly twelve hours before any filing appeared. No account above gave a date or time for the search at all.
It followed a tip-off. This article asked how the division learned of the cache, and whether the recovery followed a tip-off, surveillance or another arrest. The Daily Mirror says the search was carried out “following a tip-off.” That closes the question, though it still does not say who provided the information.
Jurisdiction sits with Kirindiwela. The paper places the cinema “along Hanwella Road within the Kirindiwela Police Division” and files under a Gampaha dateline. This article had noted that coverage was being filed under either town’s name because the road connects the two districts; on the Daily Mirror’s account the premises fall in the Kirindiwela division, in Gampaha.
It also names the arresting unit slightly differently — the Colombo District Crimes Division, where Hiru and NewsFirst have “Colombo Crime Division (CCD)”. The same unit is plainly meant; both forms are recorded here.
The age now stands at two filings to one
This article treated the age difference as a transcription variance and left it there. With a third filing in, the Daily Mirror gives 38, matching Hiru against NewsFirst’s 37. That is not proof — a shared police statement could carry one error to two desks — but the weight of filings now favours 38, and that is a change from the even split described above. The Daily Mirror, like Hiru, does not name the suspect. It spells the village Millatha where NewsFirst has Millathe.
The Daily Mirror’s ammunition list should not be used to amend the inventory
One caution for any later cycle working on this story. The Daily Mirror’s breakdown conflicts with NewsFirst’s, and NewsFirst’s is the reliable one.
The paper lists 398 rounds of 12-bore, 278 of 16-bore, 49 of .32 and 3,083 “additional rounds of .32-calibre” — four figures totalling 3,808. Those are NewsFirst’s five numbers with the 35-round line removed, which is exactly the 35-round difference between the two totals. Two labels have moved with it: the 278 that NewsFirst calls 9 mm is given as 16-bore, and the 3,083 that NewsFirst calls .22 is given as .32.
The tell is internal. The Daily Mirror’s own list names .32-calibre twice and omits 9 mm entirely, while NewsFirst’s gives five calibres and five figures with no repetition and sums cleanly to the 3,843 stated in this article’s headline. The labels appear to have slid by one position in the Daily Mirror’s version after a line was dropped.
This matters because the analysis above depends on those labels. The observation that the 35 16-bore rounds match no recovered weapon, and that the .22 block is 80 per cent of the stock with a possible match in the unspecified repeater, both rest on NewsFirst’s labelling. On the Daily Mirror’s labelling there would be no 9 mm at all — despite two pistols and a revolver among the recovered weapons — and no .22, despite the repeater. The inventory table above is unchanged, and the Daily Mirror is cited here for the search date, the tip-off and the jurisdiction rather than for the calibre breakdown.
Update, 19 October: an MP with the same surname denies any connection, and threatens to sue
A sitting opposition MP has issued a statement denying that the man arrested in this case is his brother, or related to him in any way, after what he describes as false media reports.
Harshana Rajakaruna, a Samagi Jana Balawegaya MP for the Gampaha district, said reports that a person arrested with firearms by the Colombo Crime Division is his brother, and that a relationship exists between the two of them, are “completely false,” Hiru News reported at 9.57 a.m. on Monday.
The MP said he is the only male child in a family in which his three siblings are sisters, and therefore has no brother at all. He added that it is unjust to attempt to place on him wrongs committed by another person merely because the family name is the same.
He also said that across 11 years as an MP he has never obtained even the firearm to which members of Parliament are entitled, and that his late father, Sarathchandra Rajakaruna, never kept a firearm in his possession either. He said he had given instructions to take legal action against the media institutions that carried the report, which he characterised as an attempt to assassinate his character politically and tarnish his name.
What this desk can and cannot confirm
The claim being denied does not appear in any filing cited by this article. None of the four reports used above — Hiru’s two, NewsFirst’s and the Daily Mirror’s — mentions Harshana Rajakaruna, a brother, or any political connection. Whatever outlets carried that claim, they are not the ones sourced here, and this article has never made it.
The denial does not name the suspect or the case. Hiru’s account refers only to “a person arrested with firearms by the Colombo Crime Division.” The identification rests on three points of overlap with this story and no more: the arresting unit is the Colombo Crime Division in both accounts, the recovery was of firearms, and the surname is shared. This desk treats the statement as referring to this arrest on that basis, and notes that the MP himself frames the issue as one of a shared family name.
The suspect in this case is Charith Kanishka Rajakaruna, 37, of Millathe, named by NewsFirst on 18 October. No filing has reported any relationship between him and the MP, and no filing reports which outlets published the claim, when, or whether any has withdrawn it. Nor has any filing recorded a police statement on the question.
The shared surname is a live hazard for anyone searching this archive. It is a common Sri Lankan name, and a bare search for “Rajakaruna” now returns an arms-cache suspect and a sitting MP who has threatened litigation over being linked to him. The two are distinct, and nothing in the reporting connects them.
Update, 20 October: remanded to 3 November, and the court orders a terrorism check
The suspect has been produced in court and remanded, Hiru News reported at 5.14 p.m. on Tuesday. This closes the question the section above recorded as open — that no court appearance had been reported and no filing said what would follow the detention order.
Pugoda Chief Magistrate Hansa Deva Samaradivakara ordered the suspect remanded until 3 November and postponed the case to that date. He was produced before the court at the end of the 72-hour detention order obtained on 18 October, which fixes the length of that order at three days — also previously unreported.
Hiru identifies him as Charitha Rajakaruna and describes him as the owner of the cinema. That is a material addition: this article had recorded that no filing stated his relationship to the building, and whether he owned, managed or merely had access to it. On Tuesday’s filing, he owns it. The forename appears as “Charitha” here against NewsFirst’s “Charith Kanishka” — a transliteration variance of the kind already noted in this story, not a different man.
A group of lawyers including Thushara Wijesinghe and Sanjaya Ranatunga appeared for him.
What the magistrate ordered investigated
The court made four directions to the Colombo Crime Division, and together they show what the police are being asked to establish:
- Submit an investigation report on the weapons promptly.
- Obtain a Government Analyst’s report on the firearms and the bombs.
- Investigate whether the weapons were used in any illegal act or any act of terrorism, and report.
- Have the Army bomb disposal unit defuse the grenades and submit a report.
The third direction is the significant one. The court has not treated this as an ordinary firearms-possession case; it has specifically asked whether the cache has a terrorism connection, alongside the general question of criminal use. Nothing in the reporting asserts such a link, and the order is a direction to investigate rather than a finding — but it tells the reader how the court is weighing a recovery of this size.
The fourth confirms that the two grenades were still live as of Tuesday, two days after the recovery.
On the inventory
Hiru’s Tuesday filing restates the recovery as two foreign-manufactured pistols, a revolver-type weapon, a repeater-type weapon, 3,083 live cartridges, a 12-bore firearm and 398 live rounds, among others. The two figures match NewsFirst’s 3,083 and 398 exactly, and the 398 again sits immediately beside the 12-bore — consistent with the labelling this article relies on.
It does not, however, give calibres for the 3,083, so it does not settle the .22-versus-.32 labelling dispute described above, and the inventory table remains as published.
Still not reported
No charges have been reported. Nothing published says how the cache came to be in the cinema, how long it had been there, whether the cinema was operating, or whether anyone else is under investigation. The name of the cinema is still unreported, as is the calibre of the repeater — the detail that would resolve the ammunition labelling.
Sources: Hiru News — arrest and recovery (Sinhala), NewsFirst — itemised inventory and suspect named, Hiru News — detention order (Sinhala), Daily Mirror — search date, tip-off and jurisdiction, Hiru News — MP’s denial (Sinhala), Hiru News — remanded to 3 November (Sinhala).
