By The mystery surrounding the missing pages from the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) report on Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday attack has sparked speculation and raised troubling questions about the integrity of the investigation process.
Public Security Minister Tiran Alles said that the 1,500 missing pages in the report will be provided to the Bishop’s Conference of Sri Lanka.
Despite five years since the incident, Sri Lankan authorities are yet to conclude the investigations into the Easter carnage that killed at least 269 people mainly Catholic devotees on April 21, 2019 and find the mastermind behind the series of six simultaneous suicide attacks carried out by Islamist extremists.
Crucial Information
However, the 88-volume report that included tens of thousands of pages was handed over to the Chairman of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference by Alles in April last year after Cardinal Malcom Ranjith, the Catholic leader in the country, raised concerns over not making the report public.
The Cardinal this month said they were given all the reports in six CDs, but over 1,500 pages with crucial information are missing in the completed report.
“There are over 1,500 pages missing in the report. They are in fact blank. The key information on evidence of Hadiya (terror leader Zahran’s wife) is missing. So we are given a report with adjusted pages,” Cardinal Malcom Ranjith told reporters in Colombo on March 13 in Colombo.
Public Security Minister Alles, however, said there was no deliberate attempt to hide anything.
“We are not dealing with the Cardinal. We are dealing with the Bishops’ Conference,” Alles said when asked by the media on missing pages.
“They could not open one CD (compact diskette). It has been found that there are some corrupt files in that CD and we are now in the process of replacing it and giving a fresh CD. Our legal group is working on that,” he said.
Information Gaps
Meanwhile the Leader of the NPP Anura Kumara Dissanayaka (AKD) who is in Toronto was asked what his government would to get justice for the Easter bombing victims if his government came in to power .He said that comprehensive investigations have been undertaken but that there are gaps in the investigation findings and once these gaps are identified its a matter of probing for the relevant information and apprehending the culprits. ‘ We will do this said AKD to the audience .
