{"id":104060,"date":"2020-06-29T15:51:11","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T22:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=104060"},"modified":"2020-06-29T15:51:11","modified_gmt":"2020-06-29T22:51:11","slug":"stf-raids-underworld-kingpins-armoury-recovers-12-t-56-rifles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/06\/29\/stf-raids-underworld-kingpins-armoury-recovers-12-t-56-rifles\/","title":{"rendered":"STF raids underworld kingpin\u2019s armoury, recovers 12 T-56 rifles"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>By Hemantha Randunu Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>The STF seized a stash of weapons from a safe house of underworld kingpin Dharmakeerthi Tharaka Perera Wijesekara alias Kosgoda Tharaka at Pitipana, Homagama yesterday.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A suspect known as Potta Kapila and identified as an accomplice of Kosgoda Tharaka has also been arrested with the stock of weapons.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The raid was carried out under the supervision of STF Commandant DIG Waruna Jayasundara.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The STF commandos found 12 T-56 assault rifles in the raid. This is the highest number of T-56 rifles recovered in a single raid and the largest stash of firearms belonging to an underworld gang, found in Sri Lanka. &nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kosgoda Tharaka wanted for many crimes including murder, extortion and drug dealing, is currently in prison.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Police have information that Tharaka is still accepting contracts to kill people. They suspect that the recovered weapons had been used in crimes by his confederates.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tharaka is a notorious criminal involved in organised crime. The police said they believed he had killed least five people besides committing several robberies.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tharaka shot dead a policeman during a robbery of a jewellery shop at Matara. He is in prison for that crime.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The STF arrested the chief accomplice of Kosgoda Tharaka, and seized 200 grams of heroin with a street value of Rs. 2.5 million, on May 25.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On May 15, the Police Narcotics Bureau arrested four associates of Tharaka, with more than 225 kilos of heroin, from a house at Mahabage in Welisara. The street value of the consignment of heroin was over Rs 2.2 billion, police said. A car and a double cab belonging to the suspects were also taken into custody.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The STF has launched further investigations to ascertain how Tharaka had amassed the weapons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Hemantha Randunu Courtesy The Island The STF seized a stash of weapons from a safe house of underworld kingpin Dharmakeerthi Tharaka Perera Wijesekara alias Kosgoda Tharaka at Pitipana, Homagama yesterday.&nbsp; A suspect known as Potta Kapila and identified as an accomplice of Kosgoda Tharaka has also been arrested with the stock of weapons. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}