Leading businessman and a director of the Janashakthi Group, Dinesh Schaffter has allegedly been murdered by an unidentified person/group. Schafter was found in critical condition and tied up inside a car inside the Borella cemetery yesterday.

It is believed Schaffter had been assaulted and left for dead before he was found by a staffer after his wife raised the alarm as she was unable to contact him. The staffer had admitted him to the ICU of the National Hospital in Colombo where he had gone into cardiac arrest and had passed away.

According to sources, Schaffter had told his wife he was going out for a meeting with an individual who owed him a significant sum of money. However, she had been unable to contact him and therefore tracked him through GPS to the Borella cemetery.

A cemetery worker claims he saw an unidentified person leaving the car, the businessman was later found in.

Schaffter in 2019 lodged a complaint with the CID against popular cricket commentator Brian Thomas for financial fraud amounting to Rs. 143 million. Thomas was arrested in 2021 over the incident and released on bail. Thomas had borrowed the money from Schafter claiming it will be invested in a leading company in Sri Lanka.