A list containing the names of 42,248 wanted criminal suspects in total has been shared among the Officers in Charge (OICs) of crimes investigation units at all police stations across the island, Acting Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Deshabandu Tennakoon said on Saturday (Jan.13).

The name lists of the wanted suspects include 35,505 open warrants to be executed throughout the island, 4,258 suspects identified through fingerprints but not arrested so far and 807 suspects wanted for crimes committed in 2022 and 1,678 for the crimes reported in 2023, as per Sri Lanka Police.

Meanwhile, the Acting IGP today (13) instructed all the OICs of the police divisions, districts and crimes units to actively engage in the ‘Yukthiya’ police operation from Sunday (Jan. 14).

The relevant officers have further been ordered to deploy all crime branch officers round the clock to arrest the suspects in the aforesaid lists by carrying out operations covering their police division within the next month.

The police headquarters expressed hopes that the ‘Yukthiya’ special police operation carried out by the police crimes units directly targeting the people involved in crime will have a strong impact in addition to cracking down on the drug networks.