Investigation by Ruwan Weerakoon
(Lanka-e-News -2026.July.26, 10.50 PM) When a claymore mine tore through the control room of Sirasa TV's Depanama transmission facility at 2:30 am on 6 January 2009, multiple intelligence insiders and former senior Army officers now say it was not the work of a rogue actor. It was, they allege, the sanctioned output of a structured, state-funded covert unit one concealed from ordinary military oversight, whose targets were not enemy combatants but editors, journalists and broadcasters.
That unit has never been formally acknowledged. No officer has been prosecuted over its alleged operations. Nearly two decades on, the more troubling question is not who gave the orders, but why the institutions charged with investigating them have consistently chosen not to.
Under then-Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka's military intelligence apparatus was, according to several senior sources, deliberately split in two. A conventional structure operated in public view. A second, separate unit operated beneath it, accountable to no oversight committee, outside the standard chain of command, and answerable in practice to a single figure at the apex of the defence establishment.
The unit's direct commander, sources allege, was retired Major General Kapila Hendavitharana. Recruitment is said to have run jointly with the State Intelligence Service, with selection resting less on operational skill than on absolute secrecy and demonstrable personal loyalty to the government, and to Gotabaya Rajapaksa specifically.
The unit was based, these sources say, at Kohuwala Army Camp, where the camp commander was allegedly told to permit unlogged entry and exit. Members reportedly lived apart from regular personnel, were exempt from ordinary mess discipline, and were insulated from the institutional scrutiny that might otherwise have followed. This was not, by every account gathered, a unit built for war; the war was nearly over by 2009. It was built, sources allege, for something else.
What is said to set this cell apart from ordinary criminal enterprise is the sophistication of its deconfliction system built, allegedly, to move armed operatives through Colombo without interception. Loadouts reportedly included 9mm pistols and T-56 assault rifles, with claymore mines reserved for structural targets. Transport relied almost exclusively on motorcycles and unmarked white vans, their plates rotated to defeat surveillance.
Sources describe a standing communication chain activated before each mission: a Ministry of Defence coordinator contacting the Colombo Commander; an Artillery Regiment officer coordinating in parallel with a senior police official; orders then passed to checkpoint commanders with one instruction: let the vans through, do not inspect, do not log.
The unit's alleged operations against media organisations span at least three years and share a signature: white vans, night-time raids, T-56 rifles used to subdue staff, and petrol used to finish what the weapons began.
6 January 2009 — Around fifteen operatives allegedly breached the Sirasa TV facility at Depanama. Security staff were suppressed with warning shots; a claymore mine was placed in the control room and, after a radioed confirmation to an unidentified senior official, detonated. Petrol was then poured through the studios and the building set alight.
29 July 2010 — Twelve operatives allegedly arrived at Siyatha Television's Hunupitiya premises in Gangarama. Two staff on duty were forced to kneel at gunpoint while equipment was doused in petrol and the facility burned down.
11 January 2011 — Six operatives allegedly targeted a property on Daham Mawatha in Malabe belonging to Lanka-e-News editor Sandaruwan Senadeera. Finding it empty, they forced entry and destroyed an archive of more than 7,000 books along with the station's computing equipment.
Not every operation reportedly succeeded. Chevaan Daniel is a former TV news anchor who previously led News 1st. Today, he serves as a Group Director on the board of the Capital Maharaja Group (CMG) in Sri Lanka, where he oversees media operations, including MTV Channel Ltd.
Sandaruwan Senadeera spent five months under active surveillance before fleeing to the UK.
The operations that did succeed carry graver consequences. Lasantha Wickrematunge, editor of The Sunday Leader, was assassinated in January 2009, days before the Sirasa attack. Prageeth Eknaligoda, journalist and cartoonist for Lanka-e-News, was abducted on 24 January 2010 and has never been found; evidence later placed before the courts has been said to link his disappearance to military intelligence operatives.
I do not write about this unit from a distance. During the final years of Sri Lanka's civil war, Prageeth Eknaligoda and I worked under considerable personal risk gathering intelligence on the LTTE, material that included contact details for senior commanders and elements of the network run by the organisation's intelligence chief, Pottu Amman. Some of it was published; the rest, judged too sensitive, was passed directly to contacts within Military Intelligence and the State Intelligence Service. This was not an unusual arrangement in wartime Sri Lanka, where the line between conflict reporting and national security was rarely clean.
After 2010, the political climate shifted sharply. The war was over, and the Rajapaksa administration was consolidating power. The accusation against both of us that our wartime access to LTTE material implied an organisational link to the Tigers was, I believe, understood even by those making it to be baseless. Eknaligoda and I had both publicly backed General Sarath Fonseka's presidential bid, placing us in direct political opposition to Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
On instructions from above, the CID opened formal inquiries and obtained our banking records. The inquiries produced no evidence of wrongdoing, and both of us were formally cleared.
Clearance did not mean safety. Eknaligoda was abducted seventeen days later. I too was sought, and it was, I believe, the sustained attention of prominent domestic and foreign media that prevented a similar outcome for me. I was later detained for two months without formal charge before release.
The unit's alleged longevity rested not on ideology alone but on a structured system of financial incentive and legal cover.
Operatives reportedly received monthly stipends above standard military pay, with bonuses for completed operations, plus non-monetary incentives: priority housing, subsidised vehicle loans, accelerated school admissions for operatives' children.
When investigations into Eknaligoda's disappearance began to implicate figures associated with the unit, including retired Major General Suresh Sallay, defence legal fees were, according to sources, settled from the Army Intelligence Secret Fund and routed through intermediaries to obscure their origin. If accurate, public money was used to defend, in open court, men accused of using public authority to commit crimes against the public.
This investigation has obtained identities and profiles of officers alleged to have been assigned to this unit. Specific names and identifying details from the core roster are being withheld from this initial report to protect the integrity of ongoing investigations and prevent tampering with evidence or witnesses. We will share full profiles and photographic evidence in subsequent instalments as verification allows.
A related disclosure, received separately, names individuals said to be linked to the unit's alleged legal-defence and benefits arrangement:
Lt. Colonel Shammi Arjun Kumararatne, former Commanding Officer, Giritale Army Camp; named as primary accused leading the unit's operations, Lt. Colonel Prabath Bulathwatte (N/O 64206), Colonel Prabodha Siriwardena (O/62582), also linked to R.M.P.K. Rajapaksa, alias "Nadan", Staff Sergeant Major Premananda Udalagama, Corporal Rajapaksage Lalith Rajapaksa, Sergeant Chamika Sumith, W. W. Priyantha Dilanjan Upasena, alias "Suresh", S. M. Ravindra Rupasena, alias "Ranji", Y. M. Chaminda Kumara Abeyratne, S.M. Kanishka Gunaratne, Aiyyasami Balasubramaniyam, D. G. T. Prasad Gamage, T. E. R. Pieris, Ekanayake Mudiyanselage Sarath, P. K. Rathnayaka, R. Gamani, S. Y. K. Silva, Lokubanda, S. L. Alwis
Sri Lanka's media organisations were not random targets. They were selected, this investigation alleges, because they asked questions that power did not want answered. The buildings that burned have been rebuilt. The journalists killed or disappeared have not been recovered. The officers who allegedly commanded, coordinated and executed these operations have, in most cases, moved into comfortable retirement or further appointment.
The question is not complicated. If the attacks on Sirasa, Siyatha and Lanka-e-News were operations with rosters, coordinators, communication chains and financial structures, not acts of unknown authorship in darkness, then Sri Lanka's institutions of accountability, the CID, the Attorney General's Department, the courts, possess both jurisdiction and, in many cases, testimony sufficient to act.
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Contact the investigative desk: [email protected]
All sources are guaranteed complete confidentiality and anonymity.
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by (2026-07-26 16:19:54)
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