Lanka SC appoints bench to hear pleas against former IGP, defence secretary

Sri Lanka's Supreme Court Thursday appointed a seven-member bench to hear petitions filed against the sacked police chief and the former defence ministry secretary for allegedly failing to prevent the Easter Sunday attacks even though security authorities had prior intelligence warning. The seven-judge bench appointed by Chief Justice Jayantha Jayasuriya will consider the Fundamental Rights (FR) petitions against sacked police chief Pujith Jayasundara and Defence Ministry Secretary Hemasiri Fernando. The case will be taken up on July 12.

The petitions were filed by a travel company executive, Janath S Vidanage, and the parents of two children killed by suicide bombers at one of the three Churches attacked on April 21. The petitioners accused the sacked inspector-general and the former defence secretary of infringing the fundamental rights of the people by failing to prevent the attacks on three churches and three hotels even when intelligence information had forewarned.

Inspector-General Jayasundara was sent on compulsory leave by President Maithripala Sirisena for his alleged inaction on the intelligence shared by India, which warned of an impending attack by Islamic militants, and thereby, failing to prevent the serial blasts that killed 258 people. Jayasundera has also filed the petition of his own rights in the Supreme Court against his "unfair dismissal" over the catastrophic intelligence failure.

In the petition submitted to the court last week, Jayasundara revealed a serious lack of communication between intelligence agencies and security arms of the government, all which fall under Sirisena. He claimed he was sidelined and excluded from attending National Security Council meetings since a political rift between the president and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe emerged in October last year.

Giving evidence before a parliamentary probe committee on Thursday, Jayasundera maintained that he had been ignored for participation at Security Council meetings on orders of Sirisena. Jayasundera said that he had not been privy to crucial security-related issues due to that.

In October 2018, Sirisena sacked Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. The police was under the control of Wickremesinghe. In the 20-page complaint, the former police chief said Sirisena had asked Nilantha Jayawardena, the head of the State Intelligence Service (SIS) -- country's premier spy agency, to report directly to the president on matters of national security.

Jayasundara claimed despite having intelligence inputs from India about an impending attack, the SIS chief did not take the warning seriously and take any action on it. More than 250 people were killed in eight coordinated suicide bomb attacks carried out by local Jihadi group National Thowheed Jammath (NTJ) linked to the ISIS on April 21.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)