Police arrest youth in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 November 2004, 17:11 GMT]
Police said they arrested a youth on suspicion in Batticaloa town Monday. He was in a restaurant in front of GV Hospital, a private nursing home in Batticaloa town, according Police. The youth, Mr. Ganesamoorthy Sasikaran, 19 of Mayilambaveli, 10 kilometres north of Batticaloa, is being questioned, according to Police. He is yet to be produced before the Batticaloa magistrate because preliminary investigations for the First Information Report (FIR) are not over, Police said.

Meanwhile, a Liberation Tigers' official in Batticaloa said the arrest and searches in the town by Sri Lanka army troops and Police are intended to ''sow fear and disrupt the current Great Heroes' Week observations.''

Sri Lanka army and Police Monday searched several houses in other parts of the town too, according to residents.

A grenade was found wrapped in a towel in an empty part of a compound of a house at which unidentified persons lobbed a bomb last week.