Nihal Silva
Sri Lankan actor
Dahanayakage Nihal Ranjith Silva (Sinhala:නිහාල් සිල්වා) (10 January 1954 – 3 December 1989), popularly known as Nihal Silva, was a Sri Lankan comedian and actor. He rose to fame playing Sargeant Nallathambi in the play of the same name. The character was a stereotypical Tamil Hindu with a bald head, small moustache, police suit and Vibhuti, three lines of ash, on his forehead.
Personal life
Silva was born on January 10, 1954, in Kirilapone and grew up in Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka as the youngest of the family. His father was Dahanayakage Andrew De Silva, who worked in Railway Department. His mother was Wataketiya Rajapaksage Lucyhami. She worked as a hospital attendant. Silva has three elder sisters, Malini, Shriyawathi and Padmini and three elder brothers, Nimal, Siripala. Silva educated at Sri Waishaka Vidyalaya, Wellawatte and Sri Watawala Maha Vidyalaya, Hatton.
Death
Silva was shot to death by Sri Lanka Army soldiers as he ignored warnings and ran a checkpoint on December 3, 1989, in Dehiwela; he possibly did not understand the situation due to inebriation.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Nihal Silva” is sri Lankan actor. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Nihal, Silva and Lankan, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “sri Lankan actor” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16012339. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954 and 1989.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Nihal Silva” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.