trained at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. At this time, the first and only arrest of the coup was to be effected at 9.30pm when Neal de Alwis, Member of Parliament for Baddegama was arrested from his residence and taken to the Galle Police Station and held there for nine hours. At this point C. C. Dissanayake received a call at his official quarters that the plan had been compromised and the leaders decided to call off the coup. Temple Trees was informed that the duty officer for the night at Police headquarters ASP V.T. Dickman had been replaced by a known conspirator. At 11:15pm a teletype message was sent out by DIG CID to Colombo and all police stations stating that a coup had been staged against the government by senior police officer and not to carry out any orders other than those of the DIG CID. Having decided that no officers of the Royal Ceylon Air Force were connected to the coup, a security cordon around Temple Trees was deployed from airforce personnel, since no one was sure how deeply the conspiracy had penetrated the ranks of the army, navy and police. The prime minister ordered the arrest of Dissanayake and J. F. Bede Johnpillai (ASP Traffic). They were arrested that night by teams made up personnel from all three services and the police. 28 January 1962 The following day arrest warrants were issued for Colonel F. C. de Saram, Colonel Maurice de Mel and Rear Admiral Royce de Mel. Colonel de Saram drove to Temple Trees where he was arrested, Colonel de Mel was arrested at home and Admiral de Mel went into hiding. In the Sunday afternoon of 28 January 1962, Radio Ceylon aired a special news bulletin interrupting its scheduled programs, announcing that a conspiracy by a group of senior police and armed services officers to stage a coup d'état had been foiled and seven police and army officers had been arrested. News then broke-out in the evening editions. The initial detainees were housed in an annexe at Temple Trees, while CID and Special Branch carried out investigations to identify other conspirators. Felix Dias Bandaranaike's continued personal involvement in the investigation was termed by some as an inquisition. Operation Holdfast The plan of the coupe which was code-named Operation Holdfast, came to light based on the statements given the arrested officers and was published in a