The Indian government has told Sri Lanka that it needs to find a solution to the Tamil political question in order to make progress in trade between the two countries.

The spokesperson of Sri Lanka’s police force, Ajith Rohana has denied that a group of Tamil journalists travelling to a workshop in Colombo were detained and said that only their vehicle was taken into custody.

Rohana said the police was not aware that the people travelling in the van were journalists and that they were stopped due to a tip-off that the vehicle was smuggling heroin, reported Colombo Page on Sunday.

Brigadier Ruwan Wanigasooriya, spokesperson for the Sri Lankan army also dismissed the journalists' account that the military planted the drugs during the stop.

“When an alleged party to crimes is involved in the decision making process of choosing the investigators or the counsel of advisors and their terms of reference for the investigation, that may not be impartial.”

"The question is why the government took all this time to do that.
Previously under several occasions the government appointed commissions and international experts to overlook investigations but none was implemented successfully."

"With regard to Udalagama Commission, the government did not let the experts to overlook the investigations and act independently. We have previous examples why we cannot rely on the government. We do not know exactly what is going to happen to this Commission. Therefore we will need to discuss its new mandate."