It has been reported that SLMC MP Nizam Kariapper is likely to find himself in hot water over his social media post that Secretary to the Public Security Ministry and former Senior DIG of the CID Ravi Seneviratne revealed before the High Posts Committee that the mastermind behind the Easter Sunday terror attacks (2019) had been identified. Seneviratne promptly denied Kariapper’s claim, and the police went into overdrive to ensure that his denial received maximum possible publicity. The police may not be equal to the task of neutralising the netherworld of crime and narcotics, but they are doing political work for the incumbent government very efficiently.
MP Kariapper is not alone in having said Seneviratne is aware of the true identity of the Easter terror mastermind. One may recall that in October 2024, speaking at the launch of Sunanda Deshapriya’s book on the Easter Sunday tragedy, Spokesman for the Archdiocese of Colombo Rev. Fr. Cyril Gamini Fernando said the terror mastermind was the person who had identified himself as Abu Hind. For the uninitiated, an international expert on terrorism told the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCOI) that probed the Easter Sunday terror attacks, “Abu Hind was a character created by a section of a provincial Indian intelligence apparatus. The intelligence that the Director SIS received on 4th, 20th and 21st April 2019 was from this operation and the intelligence operative pretending to be one Abu Hind. Operatives of this outfit operate on social media pretending to be Islamic State figures. They are trained to run virtual personae … Zahran believed Abu Hind was the Islamic State regional representative. Abu Hind was in touch with both Zahran and his brother Rilwan, and had spoken to Naufer. This part of the evidence is confirmed by the testimony of Hadiya” (pp. 218-219). Hadiya is Zahran’s widow.
Fr. Fernando went on to say, at the aforesaid book launch, that when the then SDIG in charge of the CID, Seneviratne sought to reveal who Abu Hind actually was, while testifying before the COI, he had been asked not to do so. Instead, one of the commissioners had jotted down a name on a piece of paper and passed it on to Seneviratne, asking whether it was the person the latter was referring to; Seneviratne had answered in the affirmative, Fr. Fernando added. Why did the PCOI prevent the true identity of Abu Hind from being revealed?
Intriguingly, the PCOI final report says: “The CID investigators who testified before the COI informed that they are investigating the identity of Abu Hind. Those investigations should proceed” (p. 222). If it is true that the SDIG of the CID had tried to reveal the true identity of Abu Hind, the question is why the PCOI has asked the CID to conduct a fresh probe.
Interestingly, going by Seneviratne’s testimony before the PCOI, Abu Hind cannot be Sri Lankan. Seneviratne is among 11 prominent witnesses who told the PCOI that there had been a foreign hand behind the Easter Sunday terror attacks. The other witnesses are Archbishop of Colombo His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, former President Maithripala Sirisena, former Minister Rauff Hakeem, former Minister Rishard Bathiudeen, former Governor Asath Salley, MP Mujibur Rahman, former Director SIS Nilantha Jayewardene, former Commandant of the STF SDIG (retd.) M. R. Latiff, former Chief of Defence Staff Admiral Ravi Wijegunaratne, and CID Director Shani Abeysekera.
There is a philosophical principle called Occam’s razor, which means plurality should not be posited without necessity, or, in other words, the simpler explanation of an entity is to be preferred. In the light of this principle, all that needs to be done to ascertain the true identity of the mastermind of the Easter Sunday terror attacks is to ask Seneviratne, and the PCOI commissioner concerned who he is. They are duty-bound to cooperate with investigators.
