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Mystery disappearance of thousands of rupees from shops in Kandy has baffled police and those who lost the money.
Police said they believed two nationals of a South Asian country were behind this racket which involved mesmerism.
According to police, the two foreigners would first approach the cashier of a shop, asking whether he would accept dollar notes. When the cashier declines, the foreigners, who by this time had brought the cashier under some spell, would then ask the cashier whether he could give them some new thousand rupee notes in exchange of their old notes. The cahsier then complies but later in the evening when he counts the day's collection, he would find several thousands of rupees missing.
This happened first at a Kandy supermarket, then at a leading hotel and a shoe shop.
When the complaint was made to Police by the supermarket, they thought it was an inside job, but the investigations turned towards the two foreigners when the police received similar complaints from others.
Despite Interior Minister John Amaratunga's offer to provide police assistance for body checks at night clubs and hotels, all managements are said to have refused the offer claiming they could manage on their own.
The minister said the authorities in those places should take the initiative in order to ensure the safety of those who visit their places.
After the incident at a hotel in Colombo on the night of December 31, which involved a politico's son, the minister had called for a meeting with the management of all night clubs and hotels. The incident resulted in a few bystanders being injured when a fight started and security personnel of the politico's son started shooting in the air.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is expected to move into Temple Trees soon — but officials are still trading charges over items missing from the official residence.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office said a routine inventory of all items belonging to the official residence had indicated that several furniture items made out of expensive wood and some of which have remained there for several decades had gone missing without their removal being documented in official inventories.
He said Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's portrait that had been hung during his previous stint as prime minister has also been removed, along with other portraits.
Former Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake's media secretary Seelaratne Senarath scoffed at these allegations and countered them by claiming that some items, including air conditioners, were missing when his boss moved into the Opposition Leader's official residence recently.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is expected to make a special policy statement to Parliament on Tuesday morning in his capacity as the Minister of Policy Development and Implementation.
The statement, which amounts to a policy declaration by a head of state would be debated on January 23 and 24.
Government sources said the premier is expected to lay stress on the peace initiative and the manner in which the peace dialogue is to be launched within the next few months.
The premier is also expected to refer in his policy declaration to the one hundred day programme, special development projects and how to overcome the crisis in the aviation and energy sectors.
From Neville de Silva in London
Sri Lanka's High Commissioner in London Mangala Moonesinghe is expected to return to his former posting in New Delhi as part of the diplomatic changes being planned by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's gove-rnment, according to informed sources.
Mr. Moonesinghe who has been less than two years in London, having taken up the High Commissioner's posting in mid-2000 is expected to relinquish his duties at the end of March, the sources said.
A former politician, Mangala Moonesinghe who chaired the parliamentary committee on devolution and the ethnic question at the beginning of the PA government's first term in 1994, later took up a diplomatic appointment as Sri Lanka's High Commissioner to New Delhi where he was highly regarded by his diplomatic colleagues and officials of the Indian government.
Mr. Moonesinghe's planned return to New Delhi, diplomats say, is in keeping with the great importance that the Wickremesinghe adm-inistration attaches to relations with India in its foreign policy.
This is particularly so in the context of the planned talks with the LTTE scheduled to begin in the next couple of months in which New Delhi could figure prominently though not as a frontline player.
Speculation here is that High Commissioner Moonesinghe is likely to be replaced by President's Council and chairman of the Human Rights Commission, Faiz Mustapha.
His name keeps cropping up in conversations with Sri Lankans living in London who have good political contacts back home.
Meanwhile Foreign Minister Tyronne Fernando is expected to make his first visit to London since taking up the foreign affairs portfolio.
He is due here on January 28 to attend the first ministerial meeting of the 10-nation Commonwealth committee on terrorism scheduled for the next day.
He is expected to call on British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, pay a visit to his former college at Oxford University and attend a lunch at the Inns from which he passed out as a barrister.
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