Sri Lanka: The report claims that six inmates were killed and 35 others were injured at Sri Lankan Prison. The guards have to open fire to control the riot at the prison on the outskirts of Sri Lanka’s capital, officials said Monday.
It's said that two guards are in critical condition. Pandemic-related unrest has been growing in Sri Lanka’s overcrowded prisons. Prisoners have staged protests in recent weeks at several prisons as the number of coronavirus cases surf in the facilities. Police spokesperson Ajith Rohana said inmates created “unrest” on Sunday but “the unrest situation turned into a prison riot,” he said after adding that prisoners tried to take control of the prison and hundreds attempted to escape. The heated situation was witnessed at Mahara prison, about 15 kilometers north of Colombo, and officials attempted to control the situation. But the inmates reportedly destroyed most of the property including offices inside the prison. An inmate was killed in similar unrest at another prison last week. More than a thousand inmates in five prisons have tested positive for the coronavirus and at least two have died.
Prisons in Sri Lanka are highly congested with more than 26,000 inmates crowded into facilities with a capacity of 10,000. A lawyer with the Committee, Senaka Perera for Protecting Rights of Prisoners, said the inmates had been frustrated because their appeals for coronavirus testing and the separation of infected prisoners had been ignored by officials for more than a month. Confirmed cases from the two clusters have reached 19,449. Sri Lanka has reported a total number of 22,988 coronavirus cases, including 109 fatalities.
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