COLOMBO, July 24: Sri Lankan police arrested another 175 would-be illegal immigrants from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh on Thursday and detained 26 of them, officials said.

Police questioning established the men’s nationalities and offered further details of the human smuggling operations that use Sri Lanka as a key transit point in illegal travel to Europe, the officials said.

They said 149 were freed because of their valid Sri Lankan visas and a lack of evidence against them.

Twenty Indians and six Pakistanis who had overstayed their visas were detained for two weeks.

Police arrested 75 Pakistanis, 86 Indians and 14 Bangladeshis from six guest houses at the Mount Lavinia beach resort, just south of Colombo, in an initial raid on Thursday.

Two Sri Lankans were also taken into custody, police said.

“They have come into the country legally, but were apparently trying to leave illegally by boat,” a police official handling the investigation said. “We know why they are here, but we can’t prosecute until they commit an offence.”

The latest arrests came four days after a similar detection of 22 Pakistanis, 83 Indians and nine Bangladeshis Pakistanis in the central town of Kandy.

The arrests raised to 661 the number of nationals of the three countries arrested in Sri Lanka this month in connection with people-smuggling attempts.

Sri Lanka has witnessed a surge in illegal migrants landing on the island to exploit a visa-on-arrival scheme introduced by local authorities to attract high-spending South Asian tourists.—AFP