The investigative carousel
The investigative history of the Easter Sunday attacks is a chronicle of overlapping mandates and political interference. According to the CSR, the sequence includes the Malalgoda Committee (April 2019), the Parliamentary Select Committee (May 2019), the Janak de Silva Presidential Commission of Inquiry (Sept 2019), the Imam Committee (Sept 2023), the Jayaki de Alwis Committee, and three distinct phases of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) probes.
The Malalgoda Committee, appointed within 24 hours of the blasts, identified cascading failures across five structural pillars which enabled the disaster: intelligence, investigations, communications, operations, and administration. According to the report, if specific instructions issued by the Western Province Senior DIG to monitor Zahran’s associates had been executed at the station level, the scale of the tragedy could have been significantly mitigated.
The crux of the issue, the report states, was what the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) described as an “intelligence silo” culture. The CSR report details a dangerous hoarding of data where the State Intelligence Service (SIS) and the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) refused to share vital insights of the activities.
Despite the SIS, then under Senior Deputy Inspector-General of Police Nilantha Jayawardena, receiving specific warnings of a terror attack, the DMI with its 7,000-strong unit with deep roots in the Eastern Province, maintained the stance that Zahran Hashim had fled to India. The PSC expressed disbelief that such a formidable military intelligence apparatus was unable to collect or verify data on the NTJ’s movements, even as Zahran was finalising his plans on home soil.
Further complicating the narrative is the role of a DMI informant and close associate of Zahran and his brother Rilwan, “Army Mohideen”. Despite warrants for his arrest dating back to 2017, the report states that Mohideen remained active in the Eastern Province. The CSR report questions why the DMI failed to act on his involvement or use his proximity to the cell to prevent the escalation of violence.
Also in question by the report is the identity of Abu Hind, the alleged handler who communicated with Zahran via encrypted apps like Telegram and Threema, that remains the most significant intelligence mystery. Two conflicting theories were presented to the Janak de Silva PCoI. Prof. Rohan Gunaratna testified that Abu Hind was a virtual persona created by the Tamil Nadu ‘Q’ Branch to infiltrate Islamic State cells.
However, the CSR report states that the PCoI did not fully accept the virtual persona theory. Former SIS Director Nilantha Jayawardena said that Abu Hind may have acted as a catalyst who actively incited the cell to carry out the attack rather than merely monitoring them. The report stated that the failure to unmask Abu Hind’s true identity seven years later is a deliberate omission in the quest for truth.
Channel 4 fallout
In September 2023, British broadcaster Channel 4 aired a documentary alleging that the bombings were part of a much larger conspiracy orchestrated to facilitate a change in Government by creating a national security vacuum. The allegations were based on the testimony of whistle-blower by the name Hanzeer Azad Maulana, a former aide to rebel-turned-politician Sivanesathurai Santhirakanthan (alias Pillayan).
Maulana alleged that there was a clandestine meeting in February 2018 at a coconut estate in Karadiyapuvall between NTJ members and Major General Suresh Sallay, then the DMI chief and later head of the SIS under the Rajapaksa administration. Maulana said Sallay instructed the group that an “unsafe environment” was necessary for the return of the Rajapaksas.
The Imam Committee, appointed by then-President Ranil Wickremesinghe, largely dismissed these claims, citing Sallay’s alibi of being stationed abroad during the alleged meeting. However, the CSR report slams the Imam Committee as a “powerless body” that lacked the legal authority to compel witnesses or conduct a forensic audit of travel and intelligence records. The report highlights that the committee’s decision to clear Sallay based primarily on the denials of the accused – Sallay and Pillayan, falls short of criminal and legal standards of a thorough investigation.
The missing link
The fate of Pulasthini Rajendran (alias Sarah Jasmine), the wife of the Katuwapitiya bomber, remains a critical unresolved lead. While the State maintained for years that she died in the Sainthamaruthu safehouse blast on April 26, 2019, eyewitness accounts from Zahran’s wife, Hadiya, said Sarah might have escaped the premises.
The controversy is compounded by the third DNA test conducted on the remains from Sainthamaruthu. The CSR report states that a specific group of CID officers, who replaced the original investigative team in 2019, handled the forensics for this test. It was revealed that Sarah’s National Identity Card (NIC) was used to purchase a SIM card in 2020, months after she was supposedly declared to be dead. The Government had recently reopened the forensic audit of the Sainthamaruthu site to determine if a “high-level evacuation” of an intelligence asset occurred.
The purge of the CID
A significant portion of the CSR report focuses on what it calls the “institutional decapitation” of the CID following the 2019 Presidential Election. Within days of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s victory, Shani Abeysekara, the then CID Director who had led the most productive phase of the investigation, was transferred to a minor role and later arrested.
The report recounts details of how the Department was destabilised, with five directors appointed in under two years, and officers with tarnished track records or documented misconduct reinstated and placed in charge of the Easter files.
Inspector of Police Induka de Silva, who had been previously removed from the CID for alleged false complaints and family links to narcotics, was reinstated in the Department and tasked with investigating Abeysekara and Ravi Seneviratne, the people who had originally removed him from his post.
The report stated that this shift allowed for the sidetracking of sensitive leads, such as the 2018 Vavunathivu police killings. Although the attack was initially blamed on former LTTE cadres, the CID later arrested high-ranking intelligence officers, including Inspector Sarath Samantha, for allegedly planting evidence to mislead the Vavunathivu probe and frame innocent parties.
Civil vs. criminal justice
As of April 2026, the “Accountability Ledger” remains lopsided. While 41 cases are pending in various High Courts, the report states that the primary targets were of the lower-level conspirators. The Colombo Trial-at-Bar (HC TAB 2972/21) involving 25 accused has seen over 170 days of proceedings, but progress is hampered by the withdrawal of defence lawyers following a move to daily hearings.
Regarding State accountability, the Supreme Court had already ordered former President Maithripala Sirisena and top security officials to pay millions of rupees in civil compensation for their failure to act on specific warnings. However, criminal prosecution remains a point of contention. The Janak de Silva PCoI made explicit recommendations for criminal proceedings against:
- Former President Maithripala Sirisena: For criminal negligence.
- Hemasiri Fernando (Former Defence Secretary): For criminal liability.
- Pujith Jayasundara (Former IGP): For failure to act on actionable intelligence.
- Nilantha Jayawardena (Former SIS Director): For withholding intelligence from the National Security Council (NSC).
The CSR report emphasizes that none of these individuals had faced criminal indictments to date, despite the PCoI’s findings that their “actions and omissions” directly contributed to the tragedy.
The case of Abdul Latheef Mohamed Jameel, who failed to detonate his device at the Taj Samudra and later died at the Tropical Inn in Dehiwala, offers a glimpse into alleged State monitoring. The CSR report highlights that Jameel was under SIS, DMI, and TID surveillance as early as 2015. On the morning of April 21, 2019, the Security Manager at the Taj Samudra sent the guest list including Jameel’s name to the SIS and Presidential Security Division as per routine.
The CSR questions whether the SIS identified Jameel on the list and what actions were taken in the critical hours before he relocated to Dehiwala. DVR footage from Jameel’s residence, covering the period between 19 and 21 April 2019, was found to be missing after TID officers took possession of the unit. The CSR calls for a fresh forensic recovery of these deleted segments to identify who visited Jameel in his final hours.
The current political landscape in Sri Lanka reflects a renewed demand for a “Mixed Commission” involving international observers to provide a final, transparent account. The Government has already placed several high-level suspects, including Major General Suresh Sallay, under travel restrictions and investigative remand.
Rev. Fr. Cyril Gamini, spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Colombo, told a press conference earlier this month that while some officers are finally in custody, the “masterminds” who allegedly traded blood for political power remain at large.
“Some are panicking; some are publishing books and their conspiracy theories in an attempt to pin the blame solely on Zahran. We are also not saying that the entire institution: Army, Navy, Air Force or the Police is responsible, but rather organised groups within these institutions,” said Fr. Gamini.
The CSR report also calls for structural reforms recommended in 2019, such as the establishment of a Unified National Intelligence Service (UNIS) with statutory backing and the regulation of Madrasas under the Ministry of Education which have been entirely abandoned by previous administrations.
Seven years on, the Easter Sunday saga has transitioned from a national tragedy into a metric of Sri Lanka’s institutional integrity. The findings of the CSR report suggest that the investigation was not merely a failure of competence, but a victim of deliberate “institutional decapitation”.
As the investigations carried out under the patronage of the new Government begins to unearth details of evidence-planting in Vavunathivu and revisit the DNA discrepancies of Sarah Jasmine, the island stands at a crossroads. Whether these probes will lead to the grand conspiracy or culminate in another layer of bureaucratic deadlock remains a question on all Sri Lankan psyches. For the victims from Katuwapitiya to Kochchikade, from Shangri La to Kingsbury, the 41 High Court cases represent a start, as the possibility of a “Grand Conspiracy” remains the only acceptable finality grounded in reality.