The weighing of some 10,000 gold items seized by the Sri Lankan army from the Tamil homeland during the armed conflict, the bulk of them the pawned jewellery and possessions of Tamil civilians, has been completed, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has told a Colombo court.
The CID made the submission before Colombo Chief Magistrate Asanga S. Bodaragama, informing the court that the items, now held in the custody of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, had taken close to a year to weigh. The Chief Magistrate ordered the CID to submit a detailed report on the gold.
The court had earlier directed that the items be sent to the National Gem and Jewellery Authority for examination of their weight and gold content, with a report to be submitted to the court and to investigators.
The gold was taken by the military from camps, buildings and what the state describes as "illegal banks" across the Northern and Eastern provinces during and after the war. Much of it, however, consists of jewellery that Tamil civilians had pawned at banks and mortgage centres run by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and valuables stripped from civilians during the mass surrenders at Mullivaikkal in 2009, amid the genocide of the Tamil people.
The haul, reported to exceed 80 kilograms of gold, remained in the custody of the military's Directorate of Military Intelligence for sixteen years. It surfaced only in May 2025, when the army handed it to the police amid the local government election campaign, following a complaint to the Inspector General of Police, before the court ordered its examination and transfer to the Central Bank.
The army has said the items will be returned to their rightful owners on proof of identity and ownership. For the hundreds of thousands of Tamils displaced in the final stages of the war, many of whom lost their homes, their relatives and every document attesting to what they owned, reclaiming jewellery pawned more than sixteen years ago presents a near-insurmountable barrier.
