Charles Haviland Colombo

The high figure compares with an existing army of about 200,000 members, although the deserters have been leaving the forces over a matter of years and decades.

The military spokesman, Major-General Ubhaya Medawala, said they were always looking for deserters but were now speeding up the process.

Fifty thousand

There were 50,000 or so forces members who had not taken clearance for leaving the military, and who had failed to respond to periodic amnesties offered by the government.

Some of the cases dated back 40 years, he said, to the pre-war era when the army was far smaller. General Medawala said that three or four deserters were in a group of robbers who shot two police dead a few days ago and who have all since been killed in circumstances that remain unclear.

Criminality

He played down possible other links between deserters and criminality. But there have been several such instances recently.

Earlier this month it was reported that a deserter arrested for carrying narcotics killed himself by setting off a grenade in a police station.

	Former army chief was accused of employing deserters

The military spokesman said that as and when deserters were located, they might be disciplined through docking of pay or even imprisonment – but, he said, depending on circumstances, some would get the chance to study or be trained for jobs during detention.

One of the charges the state has laid against the former military chief, Sarath Fonseka, is that he employed army deserters during his failed presidential campaign in January