Sri Lanka Sentences Ex-Police Chief to Death for Failing to Stop 2019 Easter Bombings That Killed 279

A three-judge panel at the Colombo Permanent High Court Trial-at-Bar sentenced former Sri Lankan police chief Pujith Jayasundara to death on Friday, July 31, 2026, convicting him on 854 of 855 charges tied to the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, according to Newswire.lk. The bombings killed 279 people, including 45 foreigners, and wounded more than 500, according to The Star.

The attacks targeted three Catholic and Protestant churches and three tourist hotels on April 21, 2019. A homegrown, Islamic State-inspired extremist group carried out the near-simultaneous suicide bombings, according to Newsday and The Star.

The conviction centers on what Jayasundara didn't do, not what he did. Prosecutors told the court that India's intelligence services warned Sri Lankan authorities on April 4, 2019, more than two weeks before the attacks, about a possible suicide bombing plot by extremists, according to The Star. Nothing happened. A parliamentary committee later found that police and intelligence officials sat on repeated warnings, according to Newsday.

Prosecutors argued that failure amounted to "grave crimes against humanity" and originally sought murder charges, according to The Star. The court ultimately convicted him of criminal negligence, dereliction of duty, and aiding and abetting deaths, according to Newswire.lk.

One judge on the three-member panel dissented, finding the prosecution hadn't proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt, according to Newswire.lk. This isn't a unanimous finding of guilt, but a majority decision, and Jayasundara has the right to appeal to the Supreme Court, according to The Star.

The Death Sentence Won't Mean Death

Sri Lanka hasn't executed anyone since 1976, according to Newsday. A death sentence there functions as life imprisonment in practice, not an actual execution order.

Current President Anura Kumara Dissanayake supports keeping that moratorium in place, according to Newsday. Roughly 800 people currently sit on death row in Sri Lanka, according to government figures shared with parliament in February and reported by The Star, with sentences routinely commuted to life terms.

The sentence carries symbolic accountability. Jayasundara, now 66, refused to resign when President Maithripala Sirisena ordered him to step down days after the bombings, according to Newswire.lk. He was placed on compulsory leave instead and eventually arrested alongside then-Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando.

Both men were acquitted in 2022 without ever being called to present a defense. The Attorney General appealed, the Supreme Court ruled that acquittal was legally flawed, and ordered the trial to continue, according to Newswire.lk. Friday's verdict is the result of that reopened case.

Fernando's Fate, and the Bigger Fight Over Who's Really Responsible

The same court was scheduled to rule separately Friday on Fernando, the former defense secretary, on identical charges, according to Newsday. That ruling underscores this wasn't a one-man failure. Sri Lanka's government structure put multiple officials in the chain of responsibility for acting on intelligence.

Jayasundara and Fernando have long argued they weren't the only ones who dropped the ball. Both men testified to a parliamentary inquiry that then-President Sirisena, who also held the defense and law-and-order portfolios at the time, failed to follow established protocols for assessing national security threats, according to The Star. They alleged Sirisena didn't take the warnings seriously either.

If the intelligence warnings genuinely reached the top of the government and were ignored at multiple levels, prosecuting only the police chief and defense secretary while the president who held overlapping security portfolios faces no criminal charge raises questions about selective accountability. No charges have been filed against Sirisena in this matter, based on available reporting. Whether that reflects a deliberate decision to shield him or simply a different evidentiary path is an open question the source material doesn't resolve.

Sri Lanka's Catholic Church has pushed a separate, larger claim: that the people identified so far as attackers and enablers aren't the real masterminds, and a bigger conspiracy lies behind the bombings, according to Newsday. None of the individuals believed to have directly carried out the attacks are alive to be tried. Separate trials are ongoing for people allegedly connected to the perpetrators.

Jayasundara has already paid a financial price tied to this case. In January 2023, Sri Lanka's Supreme Court ordered him to personally pay 75 million rupees in compensation to victims for violating their fundamental rights, and he completed that payment, according to Newswire.lk.

The immediate next step is his appeal to the Supreme Court, which The Star confirms he's entitled to file. Whether Fernando's separate verdict lands the same way, and whether Sri Lanka's Catholic Church gets any traction on its broader conspiracy claims, remain unresolved as of Friday's ruling.