Colombo, Sri Lanka – On the morning of April 21, 2019, tuk-tuk driver Indika Rohan took his wife and daughter to the local church for the Easter Sunday mass. He dropped them outside St Sebastian’s Church in the Katuwapitiya area of Negombo, a scenic Christian-majority town north of Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo. As he went back to his tuk-tuk parked near the church, he heard a huge explosion.
A suicide attacker had detonated himself inside the church in a coordinated attack inspired by the ISIL (ISIS) group in two other churches and three luxury hotels across Sri Lanka, killing 279 people, including 45 foreigners, and injuring more than 500 others. It was Rohan’s last ride with his 13-year-old daughter, Kanishka Hirushi, who was among 110 people killed at St Sebastian’s Church. His severely injured wife, Nilanthi Pushpakumari, 50, spent weeks in the ICU recovering.
All the men directly involved in the attacks were believed to have died. Authorities later arrested 25 suspects accused of planning the attacks – all of them Muslims. On Tuesday, a three-judge bench of the High Court in Colombo found 15 of them guilty of more than 23,000 charges, including murder, conspiracy to commit terrorist attacks, and possession of firearms and explosives.
They were given long prison terms – five receiving 200 years, five others 220 years, four 240 years each, and one receiving 260 years, based on their involvement in conspiring and aiding the attacks. Nine others were acquitted of all charges, while one accused died during the trial. Rohan, 56, said he waited for justice for more than seven years.
In 2023, the country’s Supreme Court ordered former President Maithripala Sirisena, former Inspector General of Police Pujith Jayasundara, State Intelligence Service Director Nilantha Jayawardene and National Intelligence Director Sisira Mendis to pay compensation to the blasts’ victims for their failure to prevent the attacks. The same year, a whistleblower told the British network Channel 4 that Suresh Salley, a former intelligence chief and retired army major-general, had allegedly met the bombers and that he had links with them. The whistleblower claimed the attack was allowed to happen to boost the popularity of Gotabaya Rajapaksa ahead of the 2019 presidential election.
Rajapaksa, who denied the charge, declared his candidacy two days after the attacks and won the election. Salley was arrested in February this year. He is being treated in hospital while under police custody.
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