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Fact Check
The deputy minister of transport revealed that the cause of the deadly bus accident in Kotmale was the irregular road development activities by the Rajapaksas.
The viral newscard is fabricated, confirmed the Newsfirst team.
A tragic bus accident occurred on May 11, 2025, in the mountainous Gerandi Ella region near Kotmale, resulting in the deaths of 23 people and leaving more than 30 injured. The incident reportedly took place early in the morning when a Sri Lanka Transport Board (SLTB) bus traveling from Kataragama to Kurunegala skidded off the Nuwara Eliya – Gampola main road and plunged into a ravine.
Following the accident, a user on TikTok posted a purported Newsfirst graphic in Sinhala, which read, “The cause of the deadly bus accident is the irregular road development activities carried out by the Rajapaksas to receive commissions from the expressway project. This was revealed by the deputy minister of transport,” along with an image of the deputy minister of transport and highways, Prasanna Gunasena.
The same post has also been shared on Twitter and Facebook. The posts can be seen here, here, here, here, here and here. Due to the controversial nature of these posts, we decided to verify the authenticity of this claim.
On our initial verification, we checked whether any such news has been reported by mainstream media outlets, but found nothing relevant.
The graphic card displayed a photograph of the deputy minister of transport and highways, Prasanna Gunasena, and included the Newsfirst logo and was designed to appear as a Newsfirst Sinhala social media post. We checked the official Facebook and Instagram pages of newsfirst.sinhala to see whether the news had been published there. However, no such news had been posted on either platform.
We then reached out to Newsfirst Sinhala to verify the authenticity of the graphic, where the online team confirmed that the graphic is fabricated and was not created nor shared by them.
Furthermore, the Police Media Division released a press statement on May 13, 2025, stating that the acting inspector-general of police Priyantha Weerasuriya had appointed a five-member committee to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the tragedy. As a result, no official information has been released regarding the cause of the accident so far. The actual cause can only be confirmed once the investigation is complete.
The social media posts claiming that the deputy minister of transport blamed the deadly bus accident on irregular road development activities carried out by the Rajapaksas to earn commissions from the expressway project are not true. There is no record of the minister making such a statement, and no such news has been published on Newsfirst’s social media pages. Furthermore, no official information has been released regarding the cause of the accident so far.
Our Sources
Press statement by the Police Media Division, published on the Sri Lanka Police website, May 13, 2025
The NewsFirst Sinhala team
The Facebook page of NewsFirst Sinhala
The Instagram page of NewsFirst Sinhala
False
