Youth Bringing Boats from Balapitiya Attacked in Athurugiriya: The Full Story

News has been published on social media about an unfortunate incident that befell a group of young people who, out of sympathy for the flood risk situation, came from distant areas to Colombo to help.
According to this video, a group of young people who brought boats from Balapitiya in the South, when they went to help in the Athurugiriya area,

a group of people present there, suspecting them to be a fake group, severely assaulted them. This incident has now been reported to the police, and there are some unclear aspects in the video being circulated about it. Below is a note about what is said in the video, based on the comments shown.

What happened, guys?  

We got into the boat near the houses and went somewhere into a jungle. We had to get off there. Within 15 minutes, a Dimo Batta (small truck) arrived to take the boat to another location.
Are these wretched people on drugs or ganja? What are they doing, brother, I ask you? They kept hitting us, and there wasn't a single woman to help us escape, only men were there. It's like they came to take revenge on us. We can't figure out where these guys crept in from in that jungle, or where they came from.

It was the people from Balapitiya who initiated this and brought the boat. Oh my goodness, there are people inside there too. The people present there had found out that our person had taken the boat from Galle afterwards. This news only came out after various things happened. 
First, they questioned how we brought our group here. We only came after they beat us until we bled.
They said they would call the Grama Niladhari (village officer) and told us not to lie about why we came here, saying there's no jungle or house here. All we wanted was to go to places where water was overflowing and help people. Now they said if we were doing something fake, to say so.
 When they were beating us from all directions, no one called the Grama Niladhari. They beat us thoroughly from the moment we started putting the boats in. They said we were putting on a show. We barely managed to escape. They brought a lorry to take the boats, selected spots, and tried to unload them elsewhere. Even though the authorities brought a lorry and started work, we don't know what's happening here.

 The people inside the vehicle were beaten with baseball bats. They used iron baseball bats and hit us, asking if we were 'roaming around in the South'. They hit us asking if we were taking pills (medicine/drugs). We are now completely disheartened thinking about this. With the blows we received, we are in pain. The police arrested the person who was in our boat and left us. The police told us that saying we are now stranded is a lie. 


 It's truly disgusting. Let's see how the law is enforced on this. Let's find out, we definitely need to find the person who hit us.

Video related to the incident click here