evidence: Sri Lanka on Thursday rejected the UN human rights body’s allegations about the ongoing operation to curb the narcotics menace and challenged it to provide evidence of the alleged excesses during controversial ‘Operation Yukthiya’. Addressing a press conference, Sri Lanka’s Minister of Public Security Tiran Alles also vowed to continue with the drug bust operation. Alles was reacting to the January 12 statement of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk in the wake of Operation ‘Yukthiya’ (the Sinhala term for ‘justice’) launched on December 17 with a June 30 deadline to end the drug menace plaguing the island nation and arrest all the drug dealers. "We are very concerned that authorities in Sri Lanka are adopting a heavily security-based response to the country’s drugs problem, instead of public health policies grounded in human rights. A staggering 29,000 people have reportedly been arrested on drug-related matters since December 17, with allegations that some have been subjected to ill-treatment and torture," Turk had said in the statement.