Raid at McDonalds Mt. Lavinia

The video spread across social media prior to the ban about a military raid at the car park of McDonalds, Mount Lavinia turned out for numerous speculations linking Easter Sunday attacks were confirmed to have no connections with any terrorist activities by the police. 

The raid was but a seizure of a foreign money laundering racket, the police spokesperson said.  

A stock of Turkmenistan currency Manat 48,000, converted to Rs.2.4 million was retrieved from the suspects. 

Preliminary investigations revealed that the suspects were waiting at the McDonalds car park for another party to arrive to exchange these currencies to Sri Lankan Rupees. Inquiries are being conducted to determine whether the seized money is fake and about how the racketeers received them in the first place, the police said. 

An outlook of the incident could have easily been misinterpreted to have connections with seizures of terror suspects given the video spread across social media so fast due to the nature of the of its content resembling the prevailing threat to national security, another police officer informed. 

The circulated footage reportedly had been captured by a customer at the McDonald’s who happened to be at the scene at the time of the incident. 

The suspects were remanded till May 21