Colombo: Former Inspector General of Police Pujith Jayasundara has completed the compensation payment of Rs. 7.5 crore Sri Lankan rupees (Rs 2.09 crore in Indian rupees) as ordered by the Supreme Court to the 2019 Easter Sunday terror attacks victims, court officials said on Tuesday.
Jayasundara was the police chief at the time of the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide bomb attacks which killed over 270 people, including foreigners.
In January 2023, he was asked by the Supreme Court to pay Sri Lankan Rs 75 million as compensation to the kith of those killed in the attacks.
Jayasundara, then president Maithripala Sirisena, the then top bureaucrat in the Defense Ministry Hemasiri Fernando, two senior police officers, Nilantha Jayawardena and Sisira Mendis, were all ordered to pay different amounts of compensation. Sirisena too has completed his payments by now.
A seven-member Supreme Court bench upheld the fundamental rights applications filed by 12 petitioners saying that the defence establishment’s negligence allowed the attacks to take place despite the availability of prior intelligence.
They were ordered to complete all the payments by August 30, and failure to do so would result in the filing of contempt of court charges against them by September 20.
The local jihadi group NTJ with possible links to ISIS carried out the attacks on April 21, 2019. They attacked churches during the Easter Sunday mass and Colombo five-star tourist hotels by detonating suicide bombs.
Published 10 September 2024, 08:44 IST