Former minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanth (Pillayan), the coordinating secretary, has accused Pillayan of orchestrating the Easter Sunday attacks while he was serving a prison sentence for the murder of MP Joseph Pararajasingham, a senior security official investigating the Easter Sunday attacks has told the Daily Mirror.
Azad Maulana has already revealed this information to Channel 4 and the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. He is currently in Switzerland and is due to be extradited here in the near future.
In addition, the official said that Azad Maulana had accused Gotabaya Rajapaksa and former State Intelligence Director Suresh Sale of working hand in hand with Pillayan in the Easter attacks, and that he had said that Gotabaya needed an unprotected country to come to power.
Azad Maulana visited Pillayan in prison every day, and once
was said to have introduced him to a group of Muslim prisoners involved in a murder. Zain Maulavi, Saharan’s brother, was one of these prisoners. Pillayan is said to have told Maulana that he had trained this Muslim group; it was revealed that he had been given training in LTTE tactics on how to carry out suicide attacks.
The Muslim prisoners were granted bail on 24 October 2017 and the financial support for this was provided by Suresh Salle, Azad Maulana has said. Following this, it is alleged that at the request of Pillayan, Maulana arranged a meeting between Salle and the Muslim group. Saharan also attended this meeting held in Laktowatta, Puttalam in late January 2018.
Following this meeting, Salle is alleged to have personally asked Maulana to help bring Gotabaya Rajapaksa to power as the President of Sri Lanka, the security official said.
The Easter attacks took place 13 months after the Laktowatta meeting.
After seeing the photos of the suicide bombers, the group identified Maulana Wisn as the one they had met in Laktowatta in the presence of Suresh Salle.
In November 2019, Gotabaya Rajapaksa became President and Suresh Sale was appointed as the Director of the State Intelligence Service (SIS). In 2020, Pillayan was acquitted of all charges.