A young bodybuilder was gunned down near the fish market at Pitipana in Negombo on 12 August in what has now been found to be a mistaken-identity attack.
Dhanushka Anjan Umayanga had been working for a businessman who runs a nearby vehicle parking facility, and had been planning to get married in two months’ time.
The businessman had mistaken him to be the person, with whom his wife was having an extra-marital affair, police said.
But, it was not Umayanga, but one of his friends who had been the woman’s paramour.
She had been using his three-wheeler to pay visits to her lover, which sent the wrong signal to the businessman, who had given a contract to a criminal at Heenatiyana to kill him.
As Umayanga was at his workplace on the fateful day, a motorcyclist had arrived and shot him at point blank range with a 9 mm pistol and fled.
Negombo police are looking for the businessman who is now in hiding.
