{"id":2137,"date":"2026-06-03T08:04:58","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T08:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/?p=2137"},"modified":"2026-06-03T08:04:58","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T08:04:58","slug":"three-chinese-nationals-arrested-at-katunayake-airport-for-smuggling-foreign-cigarettes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/2026\/06\/03\/three-chinese-nationals-arrested-at-katunayake-airport-for-smuggling-foreign-cigarettes\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Chinese Nationals Arrested at Katunayake Airport for Smuggling Foreign Cigarettes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Three Chinese nationals have been arrested at the Bandaranaike International Airport (Katunayake) today (Wednesday, 03) for allegedly attempting to bring foreign cigarettes into Sri Lanka illegally.<\/p>\n<p>The suspects, identified as businessmen aged 35, 38, and 50, arrived in Sri Lanka at around 2:45 a.m. on a SriLankan Airlines flight (UL-319) from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.<\/p>\n<p>The arrests were made by officers from Sri Lanka Customs and the Customs Narcotics Control Unit after jointly inspecting their luggage.<\/p>\n<p>During the inspection of six travel bags carried by the suspects, authorities discovered 279 cartons containing 55,800 cigarettes, reportedly manufactured in China, which had been concealed.<\/p>\n<p>Customs officials estimated the total street value of the seized cigarettes at approximately Rs. 8.37 million.<\/p>\n<p>The suspects are currently being held by Customs officials while further investigations are underway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three Chinese nationals have been arrested at the Bandaranaike International Airport (Katunayake) today (Wednesday, 03) for allegedly attempting to bring foreign cigarettes into Sri Lanka illegally. The suspects, identified as businessmen aged 35, 38, and 50, arrived in Sri Lanka at around 2:45 a.m. on a SriLankan Airlines flight (UL-319) from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2138,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2139,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137\/revisions\/2139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}