COLOMBO – Sri Lanka police arrested 41 people, including two candidates, for violating election rules, mainly illegal election promotions, police said.
“The two candidates were from Kalpitiya and Vavuniya areas,” Police Media Spokesperson Nihal Thalduwa, told reporters.
“Most arrests were for illegal election promotions, taking photographs, tearing up ballot papers, distributing money, and other disturbances to the peaceful voting process,” he said.
An election officer was taken off duty following an incident where a voter was not given the right assistance in the Kattankudy area.
Another incident was reported from Nallathanniya when two intoxicated persons were arrested for harassing a driver of an election official.
A 64-year-old person was arrested for tearing a ballot paper in an election centre in Wadduwa.
All ballot boxes were being transported to counting centres within hours of the polls closing.
Only persons with permission are allowed to follow the ballot boxes.
“We had started providing police protection to counting centres days ago. The Special Task Force is in charge of the protection of counting centres,” Thalduwa said, requesting the public to avoid going past the roadblocks that are in place and to not go into election centres intoxicated.
Voters were instructed to hand over all mobile phones to authorities before entering a counting centre as no phones are allowed within the premises.
There were 54 counting centres islandwide being given protection taking adverse weather conditions in certain areas into consideration. Sri Lanka Police and the Tri-forces stand ready to provide support within this regard.
Thalduwa stated that the election by far has been peaceful and the arrests that were made were mainly owing to illegal promotions. No acts of violence have been reported, however, three deaths of officers, caused by natural causes, were reported, he further mentioned.
A police officer and two civil officers on duty have thus died owing to health conditions. Postmortems are currently underway for these incidents.
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