Three years after the 2019 Easter bombings, a Colombo court issued notices to former President Maithripala Sirisena on Friday, ordering him to appear before the court on October 14.
Local media reported that Magistrate Thilina Gamage decided to name Sirisena as a suspect in the case following a private complaint filed by victims of the attack, in which they alleged the former president committed an offense by acting negligently in response to intelligence warnings. The Sri Lankan prime minister at the time, Ranil Wickremesinghe, blamed police for not acting upon the intel provided by Indian agencies on the impending suicide bombings in the country.
In March, Head of Sri Lanka's Catholic Church Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, while addressing the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, called for a UN-led mechanism to investigate the 2019 terrorist attacks, alleging it was a "grand political plot."
Last year, Ranjith wrote a 10-page letter to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, reminding him about the president's commission of inquiry recommendations seeking criminal proceedings against Sirisena for failing to fulfill his responsibilities.
The series of blasts that rocked Sri Lanka in April 2019 were the worst terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka's history, in which 269 people were killed, including 45 foreigners from 14 countries. The attacks, besides the COVID-induced lockdown, crippled the nation's tourism industry, eventually contributing to the foreign exchange crisis of 2022.