A Sri Lankan court on Friday named former president Maithripala Sirisena as a suspect in the 2019 Easter bombings in which 270 people, including 11 Indians, were killed.
PTI reported that the Colombo Fort magistrate’s court, which pronounced the judgment, accused Sirisena of neglecting intelligence reports on the impending attack leading to the bombings.
Sirisena, 71, will now have to appear in court on October 14.
The former president was earlier held as responsible for the attack by a probe panel he was forced to appoint following pressure from the Catholic Church and the relatives of the victims.
What really Happened ?
On April 21, 2019, nine suicide bombers belonging to the local Islamist extremist group National Thawheed Jamaat (NTJ) linked to the ISIS carried out a series of blasts that tore through three churches and as many luxury hotels in Sri Lanka. The death toll in the gruesome bombings was 321, including 38 foreigners. 10 Indians were among the people killed in the worst terror attack in Sri Lanka. Then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe described the Easter attacks as “global terrorism reaching Sri Lanka”.