This was revealed during the questioning of some prisoners and now the police have launched a separate investigation to identify these prison officials.

The Criminal Investigations Dept has received information about some prison officials who has come to report to duty on the morning the police launched a search party at the Welikada prison and turned back without reporting after seeing the police vehicles and the police is of the belief that they did so to avoid any responsibility they may have to take if they took part in the operation.

Meanwhile Minister of prison reform DEW Gunasekara says that steps are already taken to transfer big and small officers in Welikada prison and added that investigations done so far has revealed that not only the prison officials but also police officers are getting money from drug dealers and the CID has launched an investigation to find out how the prisoners knew about the raid well in advance.

A senior police officer said that the prison officials did not give them any support from the beginning to carry out this search operation and they were also not told that the Chapel ward had nearly 3000 prisoners. This officer also said that if they were told of this before they would have got the services of more officers and the STF. They are also trying to identify the prison officials who opened all the cells at once and let the prisoners out when they were checking the cells of the Chapel ward.

Police information sources said that they have been able to identify five hard core criminals who master minded the attack on police officers that went to the Welikada prison on a search operation. He also said that one of them is a leading drug dealer sentenced to death and another is sentenced to death for two murders. These five are normally kept in special cells but two days before the attack these five have been able to get some cell phones to their cells and controlled the attack from there.

The Prison Headquarters said that sending 63 police officers to check a ward having 2,640 detainees is an unwarranted act. Its spokesman also said that 300 police officers were deployed to check the Magazine prison and the remand prisons where only 300 detainees were held but only 63 were sent to check 2,640 inmates at the Chapel ward which is rather hilarious.

He also said that they completely reject the claim that prison officials did not help in this raid and added that no one ever asked for their help.