Hyderabad: This is really strange. Really inexplicable. Seems like there is something terribly wrong, something terribly rotten in the Sri Lankan state administration. First it was Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe who said the explosive words - Intelligence reports were not shared with me or the ministers. Perfectly understandable considering the strained relations between him and the Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena. But now Sirisena too says, he knew nothing about the intelligence reports provided by other countries about the probability of blasts.
If the country's President and the PM do not know about the existence of intelligence inputs supplied by the US and specifically India, then it speaks volumes of the state of affairs in Sri Lanka. Agreed, the administration and the country's security apparatus had been in a relaxed mood for the past ten years since the LTTE was gone in 2009. Vigils were minimum, alertness waned, state intelligence agencies were dozing, but the questions that come to the fore are, one - why were the country's President and PM kept in the dark? And two, why was not the reports acted upon?
Also Read: Intelligence not communicated to me: Sirisena
Heads might roll, but as of now the priority is to get hold of all the suspects. The initial questions are by and large answered. Sri Lanka has said that the local outfit National Towheeth Jamaath is the prime suspect. Islamic State has claimed responsibility. It has released a video of the people involved in the attacks. In the video there is one unmasked face which belongs to Zahran Hasim who is the main man and whose name was provided by India to Sri Lanka. Lanka identifies Hasim as a leader of Towheeth Jamaath.
Sri Lanka also says that the attacks were in retaliation to the Christchurch killings in New Zealand where 49 Muslims were shot in two mosques a month back. That the churches of Sri Lanka would be targeted was the information India got while interrogating an IS suspect. The suspect told his interrogators that Christians would be attacked in churches in Sri Lanka, and gave the name of Zahran Hasim, reports CNN. Yet, the Sri Lankan security chiefs slept on it. The intelligence inputs were passed around but no preventive measures taken. Security was not beefed up around churches and big hotels. Jamaath men were not questioned. Everything was left unguarded. And the country's President and PM were kept out of the loop.
The big question is - WHY?
