Inside maggot-infested 'hellhole' prison where Charlotte Lee faces LIFE for 'smuggling drugs'

This is the "hellhole" overcrowded prison where a young British woman accused of smuggling £1.2million worth of into faces decades of imprisonment.

Charlotte May Lee was arrested in Colombo last week after being accused of smuggling 46kg of Kush - a synthetic form of cannabis - into the country. The 21-year-old woman, from Coulsdon, south London, had been travelling from Bangkok and was detained after stepping off her plane.

She is currently being held in a local jail, Negombo Prison, while her case progresses through the courts. If found guilty of the charges held against her, it is understood Lee faces being sent to Welikada Prison in the capital Colombo - the country’s largest, maximum security jail.

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The woman, who was air stewardess with TUI, is said to have had two suitcases stuffed with 46kg of a synthetic drug known as kush on her possession at Bandaranaike International Airport.

Negombo Prison has a miserable history and has been described as a "hell" for female prisoners in particular. Maggots have reportedly been found in food and rats have been scuttling around extremely overcrowded cells in Negombo Prison.

One anonymous female prisoner said, in an interview in 2011: "We are treated as far less than human. About 150 of us sleep in a cell designed for 75 people. An open drain infested with rats runs the perimeter of the room. Recently, one of the inmates was bitten and had to be rushed to the hospital for an anti-rabies shot."

They compared the jail to "hell" in the interview with Al Jazeera, which happened one year before riots at Negombo Prison killed 27 people, including guards. A further riot in 2020 saw at least eight people die.

The source had warned: "We eat, bathe, sleep, wake up and begin all over again. There are no attempts at rehabilitation. Women here just waste away... There are 650 of us in the female ward though it was built for 150 people."

It is believed Lee left the UK for Thailand a fortnight ago, having made vague comments to friends about meeting a man in the Far East country. She ended up in Sri Lanka, a nation facing a crisis with overcrowding in its prisons across the country. The country’s prison department recently claimed there are "too many jailbirds, not enough jail guards".

A friend, close to the Lee family, told the : "We’re frantically worried. She was arrested then seemingly abandoned and is rotting in a jail cell. She’s very scared." Another friend added: "She’s been told if convicted, because of the size of the drugs haul, she’s looking at between 20 and 25 years in jail."

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said with regards to Lee’s case: "We are supporting a British woman who has been arrested in Sri Lanka and are in contact with her family and the local authorities."