Church leaders welcome release of parish sacristan

The Catholic Church leaders have welcomed the release of a parish sacristan on Feb. 9, a month after he was detained on the suspicion of planting a hand grenade inside his church.

Selvadore Francis Munindran and three others, including a nine-year-old child, were detained on Jan. 11 after a live grenade was found inside the All Saints Church near Colombo.

The grenade recovery and arrests happened three days ahead of the local Church’s commemoration of the 1,000th day of the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings.

Colombo Additional Magistrate Rajindra Jayasuriya ordered Munindran’s release after the government’s legal representative told the court that no criminal charges were being pressed against the suspect due to insufficient evidence.

The three other suspects in the case were released a week earlier.

Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith had protested the arrests of “innocent people” in the case and even boycotted the official Independence Day celebration. He also met Munindran while he was under detention on Feb. 4.

Church officials say police arrested those who reported the crime than identifying the real culprits.

Munindran was instrumental in preventing a blast at the church, said Father Jude Chrisantha, the archdiocesan director of mass communication.

“He is a gentleman and the Cardinal Ranjith had visited him to express the Church’s gratitude to him,” he said.

Neville Abeyratne, the President’s counsel and attorney-at-law said that although it was initially reported that the hand grenade was planted by church workers, their innocence had now been confirmed.

“There is no need for the Catholic church or the cardinal to keep a bomb in the church,” he said.

Abeyratne called for further investigations to uncover the truth behind the incident and the arrests of the real culprits behind it.

He said the incident reveals “a dangerous situation that raises serious suspicions” because the grenade was found near the residence of Cardinal Ranjith.

The Catholic Church, led by Cardinal Ranjith,  has been highly critical of the manner in which the Sri Lankan government went about the investigations into the Easter bombings and the conspiracy behind them.

Nuwan Fernando, a Catholic businessman from Colombo, pointed out that the grenade incident had come days after Cardinal Ranjith had hinted at the possibility of another politically motivated attack.

“We believe that politicians wanted to create a misleading story but God prevented it from happening,” said Fernando who was present at a rally marking the 1,000th day of the Easter Sunday bombings. (UCAN)