A special team of the Crime Branch-CID (CB-CID) on Saturday arrested a close aide of Sri Lankan gangster Maddumage Lasantha Chandana Perera alias Angoda Lokka who died under suspicious circumstances while hiding on the outskirts of Coimbatore in 2020.
CB-CID sources said Chanuka Thananayaka (38) alias Nalin Sathuranga alias Ladia, who hails from Athurugiriya in Sri Lanka, was arrested from Bengaluru on Saturday. T. Gopalakrishnan (46) alias Jayapal, a resident of PNS Layout at Subbannapalya in Bengaluru, who allegedly harboured the Sri Lankan native, was also arrested.
Thananayaka’s name surfaced when the CB-CID started its investigation into Lokka’s death while he was hiding along with a Sri Lankan woman, namely Amani Thanji in a rented house near Cheran Ma Nagar in Coimbatore on the night of July 3, 2020. As per Thanji’s statement, Lokka complained of severe chest pain and died before reaching a private hospital near Coimbatore airport.
The investigators found that Lokka lived in Coimbatore as Pradeep Singh for nearly two years. Madurai-based advocate D. Sivakamasundari and her friend S. Dyaneswaran from Erode had helped Lokka get an Aadhaar card in the name of Pradeep Singh and get a plastic surgery done for his nose.
Sivakamasundari, Dyaneswaran and Thanji took Lokka’s body to Madurai after post-mortem at the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital on July 5 and cremated it there. During interrogation, they told the CB-CID investigators that a pistol used by Lokka was handed over to Thananayaka in Madurai. The CB-CID was on the hunt for Thananayaka from September 2020.
Sources added that Thananayaka was apprehended from Bengaluru based on specific intelligence with the help of the Karnataka Police. Thananayaka and Gopalakrishnan were brought to Coimbatore and produced before Chief Judicial Magistrate M. Sanjeevi Baskar who remanded them in judicial custody.
