Army Major arrested for extorting money from Tamil businessman

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 February 2010, 11:39 GMT]
The Criminal Investigation Department of the Colombo Police Wednesday arrested an army officer in the rank of a Major in the Sinha Regiment of the Sri Lanka Army and another civilian in connection with an alleged extortion of money in the amount of seven million rupees from a leading businessman in Wellawatte, media in Colombo reported.

The suspect army officer has been serving in the Ambepussa Sinha Regimental Headquarters and the other person had been an employee of the said Tamil businessman.

The suspect Major had been posing as a representative of the Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse and demanded extortion to fund the President Rajapakse presidential election campaign if ignored the demand of Gotabhaya Rajapakse he (businessman) would face dire consequences.

The said Major during the initial investigation denied that he was not in the army but later found that he had been stationed at an army camp located in Modera at that time of committing the alleged offence.