operation to bring Harak Kata, Kudu Salindu
The secret operation to bring underworld criminals including Nadun Chinthaka Wickramaratne alias Harak Kata, Salindu Malshitha Gunaratne alias Panadure Kudu Salindu, who are powerful underworld drug traffickers of the country, who were arrested in an operation conducted by security forces of that country in Madagascar, has commenced with the involvement of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
Accordingly, a special team of officers from the CID will visit Madagascar in a few days and take necessary steps to bring these criminals to Sri Lanka. According to reliable information, the group will consist of four people and the group has already received permission for this.
Since Madagascar provided a good response regarding handing over these criminals to Sri Lanka, the special team has put into action the preliminary plans to bring them to Sri Lanka.
Police information stated that all eight people arrested with Harak Kata and Kudu Salindu will not be brought to Sri Lanka. Apart from the foreign woman (Malagasy national) who is alleged to be the wife of Harak Kata and the person who is said to be her father, six others will be brought back to this country.
The matter had been also discussed at the Security Council meeting held yesterday (7).
Meanwhile, it is learned that the CID has decided to only bring Harak Kata and Kudu Salidu first due to various difficulties related to bringing them to Sri Lanka.
It is an accepted rule of the airlines that when a criminal is transported in a passenger plane, three security personnel must be present for security. Also, only one criminal is allowed on a single passenger flight.
For this reason, it will become a tough challenge to bring these two criminals to this country at once. Also, if these two are brought at the same time, six people from the security department should be involved in this journey in consultation with the airlines.
Authorities have decided to carry out the operation of bringing down these persons to Sri Lanka in a very secretive manner. An operation to bring these criminals to Sri Lanka has been launched very secretively. This is because previously, after Harak Kata was arrested in Dubai, lawyers from Sri Lanka had even gone there to represent him and worked towards saving him.
There is information that in addition to Harak Kata and Panadure Kudu Salindu, criminals like Badovita Asanka, Panadure Sudu and Tharanga are among those arrested. Apart from that, information that the criminal named Jilé is also among this group has been uncovered by the underworld crime investigation police teams through their investigations. However, those in the know revealed that Sri Lanka has already received as of yesterday, a clear list of who has actually been arrested in Madagascar. Police authorities have decided not to reveal the identity of the criminals in the list until they are brought to Sri Lanka. That is due to more attention being paid to safety. In addition to the list of names of these criminals, close-up photographs have also been forwarded to Sri Lanka for identification purposes.It has also been revealed that every arrested criminal, including Harak Kata, has foreign passports prepared in the names of other people. These underworld criminals, who appeared under other names, have been identified after their close-up photographs were sent to Sri Lanka.
This underworld gang, including Harak Kata and Kudu Salindu were arrested by the country’s security forces in Madagascar when they arrived at the airport to travel to another country. That was on the first.
The arrest was revealed by the L’EXPRESS website, a major media network in Madagascar and that was done day before yesterday (06). Those media reports had been released after it was discovered that the arrested criminals including Harak Kata are clearly wanted criminals in Sri Lanka.
According to the report that appeared on this website, 05 people, including Harak Kata, had arrived at the country’s “Nosy Be” International Airport on February 12 in a private jet. The following day, these people arrived at the Antananarivo airport on an internal flight. The country’s media had reported that they were arrested on the 1 March when they were leaving Madagascar.
At the time of arrest, Harak Kata had posed as a very wealthy person. According to information received from the country, Panadura Kudu Salindu had invested money in a gem mine in Madagascar and had been living there as an investor for a long time. Information received from that country states, that black money earned from drug trafficking had been laundered through gem mines of Madagascar.
That country’s media had reported that through investigations conducted after the arrest of these criminals it had been revealed that Harak Kata and others who had come to Madagascar were staying in luxury hotels located in Ivato and Ambohimangakely. It is said that according to footage from security cameras in those hotels, the security forces there have collected information about his behaviour as well as many other things and even about the people they had contact with in Madagascar.
It has also been found in the analysis conducted by Sri Lanka’s intelligence agencies that these underworld criminals, including Harak Kata and Kudu Salindu, pretended to be businessmen who owned gem mines in Madagascar and were also running a drug trade centered on that country. The underworld crime investigation police units including the CID believe that after these criminals are brought to Sri Lanka, they will be able to discover a lot of information about this criminal network.