Midweek Review

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida: A contrarian Review

Published

3 years ago

2022/11/16

Sahan Weerasooriya

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, London
Author: Shehan Karunatilaka,
Publisher: Sort of Books, August, 2022.

by S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole
DSc (Eng) Lond, PhD Carnegie Melon,
IEEE Life Fellow, CEng.

The book under review is authored by one described as one of Sri Lanka’s foremost literary authors. According to the blurbs on the book, he emerged on to the global literary stage in 2011, when he won the Commonwealth Book Prize, the DSL [sic.] and Gratiaen Prize for his debut novel, Chinaman. And now he has garnered the Booker Prize. (Note: DSL seems another name for the Commonwealth Book Prize, but with no confirmation of this anywhere).

It is truly a great book in line with his achievements. Perhaps, its great merit is in admitting as a Sinhalese the great atrocities committed by the Sri Lankan state when most Sinhalese cover up saying the massacres are terrorist propaganda by the Tamil Tigers. A memorable line from the book is “We are inviting the Indians to invade us. We are making deals with Tamil Terrorists. We are killing our own Sinhalese.” It is a testament to the killing fields opened up by the state in 1989, when it struck deals with the Tigers to be rid of the Indians.” Another line goes, “Tigers and Army killing civilians. Indian peacekeepers starting wars.” Even for Tamils who see Tiger killings as altruistic, this should be an eye-opener, except that we wear blinkers and in the UN Secretary General’s report on the killings at the end of the war in 2009, we selectively choose to see only the blame on the Sri Lankan government in the report, ignoring the fingers pointed at the Tigers.

It should awaken the Sinhalese of whom many will read the book rightly taking great pride in the Sinhalese author who has the Booker Prize under his belt. It will be educative.

This madness is the setting of the book. Karunatilaka has chosen to tell the story through the interaction of ghosts of those slaughtered. His primary character vehicle for story-telling is the ghost of Maali Almeida, a photographer living off selling photos to the Army and foreign reporting agencies, and even the Tigers. Maali Almeida is killed. He has seven moons to recover his two photos from the 1983 massacre and atrocity, as Karunatilaka calls it, unlike the misbegotten, sterilized phrase, riots, which the Sinhalese try to project as if the Tamil victims of 1983 also rioted like the Sinhalese. The two photos show Minister of Justice Cyril Wijeratne as a bystander while his thugs burn Tamils. Although Wijeratne is hiding from the camera, his reflection is caught by Almeida’s camera on his Benz car window. Wijeratne’s attempts to recover the photos, using Detective Cassim and, yes, Major Rajah Udugampola, form the meat of the story. In an interview, Karunatilaka has said he used the real names of bad guys. It will not be lost on readers that real-life Ministers Cyril Matthew and Ranjan Wijeratne, and Udugampola are widely believed to have been behind murders of Tamil civilians, JVP Che Guevarists and the LTTE break-off Karuna faction that turned on Prabhakaran.

All of Almeda’s photos are in a box. The narrative is about Almeida asking his girlfriend Jaki (Jacqueline) to somehow retrieve the photos. The ghosts of the massacred and even of leopards play their part.

The book reviews are full of praise – astonishingly light touch, beguiling, unsentimental, by turns tender and angry and always unsparingly droll. We are plunged with an exhilarating energy into a rich and darkly comic world. This Sri Lankan history as whodunnit, thriller and existential fable teeming with the bolshiest spirits.

Karunatilaka questions the origin myths of the Sinhalese and Tamils and asks if there ever were lions and tigers among us to have them on nationalist flags. The book claims that the CIA trained Sri Lankan soldiers in the use of torture and that war material came from Diego Garcia.

Having said that, I wish to add a little to complement the very positive reviews derogating a little from those views. In an interview with Frontline in India, Karunatilaka says the book was first published in India in 2020 as Chats with the Dead (Penguin). However, many publishers “passed it on, saying that Sri Lankan politics was quite esoteric and confusing. Some said that the mythology and worldbuilding was impenetrable, and difficult for Western readers. Finally, Sort of Books agreed to take it on, but they also said they would need to make it familiar to Western readers.”

I humbly submit that some of the problems persist even after two years of revising. Many Sinhalese words (sena, thambili, boru, suliya, thathi, siri siri bag, pittu, to give some) remain. Sanskrit, too (Rahu time, abhithiyas, nehi). Some grammar mistakes are surprising for a book published in England (“turmeric and lavender has been mixed,” deader, “a quarter of arrack,” “a pink paper,” “dumping bodies have broken their nerves,” “all manners of vice”, “plenty of ugly,” “neither of you get wet,” “you are not the first accuse me,” etc.). There are also the peculiar three-word sentences” “What. The. Hell,” and “Did. You. See her?”

Then there are accidental spelling mistakes (fiv e, Homo sapiens (twice), fouth and fifth, kanatte, etc.). The phrase “cousin brother of the kissing variety” would make sense only to South Asians.

Some of those acknowledged by Karunatilaka by name do not remember being consulted. I believe he consulted some of their works rather than the individuals; citing which works would have been more accurate and less confusing since those supposedly consulted are long dead.

In renaming real characters to avoid defamation, the author says in an interview that Ranee Sridharan is Rajani Thiranagama – that is unfortunate because Sridharan was her close associate and married to someone else.

The line “the government forces, the eastern separatists, the southern anarchist and the northern peacekeepers are all prolific producers of corpses” might seem pithy and clever to those not familiar, but it certainly is not accurate of the peacekeepers who, as far as I know, have never shot back even when threatened by the Tigers or the Sinhalese.

Karunatilaka accuses Rajani Thiranagama (i. e. Rani Sridharan) of using Almeida’s photos without permission in a book. I am not aware of a book by her other than the Broken Palmyra (which I edited and published in the US from my Sri Lanka Studies Institute because it was not possible to publish in Sri Lanka when Premadasa and Prabhakaran were partners in murder). Her family is unaware of any other book by her. Later on, in the book, what Karunatilaka called the plagiarized photos in her book, become photos in her article.

Usually, western artistes today work against negative stereotypes even when they are correct. So, we have few Afro-Americans as doctors and lawyers in America but if we watch the TV series, Law and Order, it would seem that almost every other doctor or lawyer is Afro-American. Likewise, almost everyone is made out to be a homosexual on television and movies. It is not unlike Shyam Selvadurai, who like Karunatilaka left Sri Lanka in his early teens. Selvadurai outed himself and soon won many literature awards in Canada – after all, a South Asian openly calling himself homosexual is rare and a prize catch for the homosexual lobby. It is perhaps because of this trend that Karunatilaka tends to make out that everyone in Colombo is homosexual or bisexual. I cannot but help remark that both Selvadurai and Karunatilaka have had formative Anglican Church influences in their lives – Karunatilaka went to S. Thomas’ Prep, while although Selvadurai went to Royal College, the Selvadurai family is a well-known Anglican family from Jaffna, of whom many went to St. John’s or S. Thomas’. Karunatilaka goes into explicit detail on sex between homosexuals.

Yet, despite the homosexual tilt, one of the ugliest characters in the book, Udugampola, is homosexual. Udugampola sits across a young man putting his knee between the legs of the man to “smother his nuts with his knee cap” and in other places strokes another man’s crotch with his knees. Nonetheless, Udugampola, apparently homophobic, objects to “homo photographers” and “queers with cameras” lest they bring HIV to his soldiers in camp. There is also a mysterious reference by Udugampola to a “homo cough.”

Karunatilaka would have us believe that in Colombo (which I think I know well) upper class women have casual sex with waiters in clubs and restaurants. And, also that there are no committed couples. Girls there are projected as allowing themselves to be fondled in malls. Karunatilaka does not seem to understand class in the choice of sexual partners, nor that women tend to avoid free sex in their search for stable marriage.

There is even a little bit of hate speech in promoting the word, ponnaya, as standing for impotence and homosexuality. In another place, he contradicts himself in giving a ponnaya as an impotent homosexual. Usually, that should have got the book disqualified. (In Tamil ponnaiyah stands for a rustic fool rather than what Karunatilaka says). Likewise, “the croak of a Madrasi Tamil” seems a generalized put down of Tamils.

There are also lines intended to be humourous that would have been best avoided to make the book suitable for children – “Why do deluded men crave virgins? Because a virgin cannot know how bad in bed you are.” Equally upsetting is the claim that some nuns are liberal and can be kissed. This too is offensive and not suitable for a Booker Prize book. The Booker judges were wearing blinkers.

Karunatilaka sees no immediate acceptance of homosexuality in Sri Lanka, for he writes of the future of homosexuals being in having a girlfriend, sleeping with her and lying with the landlord’s son in the spare room. That does not say much for integrity in homosexual relationships. He writes of oral sex being common and even obtainable for money in Anuradhapura. I doubt that. He also says it is not sex because in sex one has to see the face of the partner. It sounds a repeat of President Bill Clinton’s claim that he did not have sex with Monica Lewinsky because there was no penetration.

Another example of hate speech is “I am not a bloody Chinaman with a pony tail.” There is the stark generalization by a Minister that Negroes run faster, Chinese work harder and Europeans invent: our race, school and family will dictate how the dice of life will roll for you. Another is that our rich send their children to London, the poor send their wives to Saudi [sic.] and European paedophiles tan on our beaches. Another refers to the barbarism of India in ’89, the cruelty of Tamils out east in ’87 and the savagery of Sinhalese down south in ’83. An interesting phrase is about weaponising politeness as well as any Englishman.

There are factual inaccuracies, too. Karunatilaka says Jaffna hospital was punished by the IPKF for the crime of treating the LTTE, whereas the LTTE deliberately fired at the IPKF and the retaliatory fire is what caused many hospital personnel to die. He is particularly off about Mahatiya (Mahathaya, the LTTE’s Col. Gopalasamy) who is said to have had a lover in defiance of Prabhakaran’s orders, whereas to the best of my knowledge he was happily married to a former Tiger woman. Mahathaya, says Karunatilake, was killed by putting him in a beachside cavern to drown as the tide came in. It is, however, well-known that he was arrested in 1993 and was taken to Mankulam during the 1995/96 displacement with his fellow prisoners and executed by gunfire with some of them after informing his wife Yogeswari (nom de guerre Kalpana), a former Tigress.

I am mindful that I am a ponnaiyah in the Tamil sense (not Karunatilaka’s ponnaya), a rustic brought up in Jaffna with all my schooling in the Tamil language. So, how valuable is my criticism of a Booker Prize book? I found the second person narrative using ‘you’ very difficult, not knowing “who” the word “you” referred to. The book unusually took me a few days to read. To balance, my wife who was schooled in Colombo did not understand what my problem was.

In The Sunday Observer of 13 Nov. 2022, Sri Lankan columnist Rajpal Abeynayake is claiming Karunatilaka has stolen off a manuscript he had given him many years ago while scouting for a publisher. Karunatilaka has since denied all allegations calling them ‘baseless and insulting.’ Abeynayake in turn claims he has evidence of Karunatilaka’s alleged plagiarism off his untitled and unpublished manuscript. I cannot judge.

But overall, Karunatilaka’s is an excellent book. Pithy. Interesting. Humourous. But dirty, vulgar, politically incorrect and even offensive in parts.

The Booker Prize judges need to be careful, and not use the prize to cook and advance their own liberal agendas.

All News Advertisement

Related Topics:Shehan Karunatilaka The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Up Next

A deal on ECT at the Colombo harbour

Don't Miss

Failed 2015 political project may have triggered Easter Sunday attacks

Click to comment

Midweek Review

At the edge of a world war

Published

1 day ago

2026/03/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

In September 1939, as Europe descended once more into catastrophe, E. H. Carr published The Twenty Years’ Crisis. Twenty years had separated the two great wars—twenty years to reflect, to reconstruct, to restrain. Yet reflection proved fragile. Carr wrote with unsentimental clarity: once the enemy is crushed, the “thereafter” rarely arrives. The illusion that power can come first and morality will follow is as dangerous as the belief that morality alone can command power. Between those illusions, nations lose themselves.

His warning hovers over the present war in Iran.

The “thereafter” has long haunted American interventions—after Afghanistan, after Iraq, after Libya. The enemy can be dismantled with precision; the aftermath resists precision. Iran is not a small theater. It is a civilization-state with a geography three times larger than Iraq. At its southern edge lies the Strait of Hormuz, narrow in width yet immense in consequence. Geography does not argue; it compels.

Long before Carr, in the quiet anxiety of the eighteenth century, James Madison, principal architect of the Constitution, warned that war was the “true nurse of executive aggrandizement.” War concentrates authority in the name of urgency. Madison insisted that the power to declare war must rest with Congress, not the president—so that deliberation might restrain impulse. Republics persuade themselves that emergency powers are temporary. History rarely agrees.

Then, at 2:30 a.m., the abstraction becomes decision.

Donald Trump declares war on Iran. The announcement crosses continents before markets open in Asia. Within twenty-four hours, Ali Khamenei, who ruled for thirty-seven years, is killed. The President calls him one of history’s most evil figures and presents his death as an opening for the Iranian people.

In exile, Reza Pahlavi hails the moment as liberation. In less than forty-eight hours, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps collapses under overwhelming air power. A regime that endured decades falls swiftly. Military efficiency appears absolute. Yet efficiency does not resolve legitimacy.

The joint strike with Israel is framed as necessary and pre-emptive. Retaliation follows across the Gulf. The architecture of energy trade becomes fragile. Shipping routes are recalculated. Markets respond before diplomacy finds its language.

It is measured in the price of petrol in Colombo. In the bus fare in Karachi. In the rising cost of cooking gas in Dhaka. It is heard in the anxious voice of a migrant worker in Doha calling home to Kandy, asking whether contracts will be renewed, whether flights will continue, whether wages will be delayed. It is calculated in foreign reserves already strained, in currencies that tremble at rumor, in budgets forced to choose between subsidy and solvency.

Zaara was the breadwinner of her house in Sri Lanka. Her husband had been unemployed for years. At last, he secured an opportunity to travel to Israel as a foreign worker—like many Sri Lankans who depend on employment in the Middle East. It was to be their turning point: a small house repaired, debts reduced, dignity restored.

Now she lowers her eyes when she speaks. For Zaara, geopolitics is not theory. It is fear measured in distance—between a construction site abroad and a village waiting at home.

The war in Iran has shattered calculations that once felt practical. Nations like Sri Lanka now require strategic foresight to navigate unfolding realities. Reactive responses—whether to natural disasters or external shocks like this conflict—can cripple economies far faster than gradual pressures. Disruptions to energy imports, migrant remittances, and foreign reserves show how distant wars ripple into daily lives.

War among great powers is debated in think tanks. Its consequences are lived in markets—and in quiet kitchens where uncertainty sits heavier than hunger.

The conflict does not unfold in isolation. It enters the strategic calculus of China and Russia, both attentive to precedent. Power projected beyond the Western hemisphere reshapes perceptions in the Eastern theater. Iran’s transformation intersects directly with broader alignments. In 2021, Beijing and Tehran signed a twenty-five-year strategic agreement. By 2025, China was purchasing the majority of Iran’s exported oil at discounted rates. Energy underwrote strategy. That continuity has been disrupted. Yet strategic relationships do not vanish; they adjust.

In Winds of Change, my new book, I reproduce Nicholas Spykman’s 1944 two-theater confrontation map—Europe and the Pacific during the Second World War. Spykman distinguished maritime power from amphibian projection. Control of the Rimland determined balance. Then, the United States fought across two vast theaters. Today, Europe remains unsettled through Ukraine, the Pacific simmers over Taiwan and the South China Sea, Latin America remains sensitive, and the Middle East has been abruptly transformed. The architecture of multi-theater tension reappears.

At this juncture, the reflections of Marwan Bishara acquire weight. America’s ultimate power, he argues, resides in deterrence, not in the habitual use of force. Power, especially when shared, stabilizes. Force, when used with disregard for international law, breeds instability and humiliation. Arrogance creates enemies and narrows judgment. It is no surprise that many Americans themselves believe the United States should not act alone.

America’s strength does not rest solely in its military reach. Its economy constitutes roughly one-third of global output and generates close to 40 percent of the world’s research and development. Structural power—economic, technological, institutional—has historically underwritten deterrence. When force becomes the primary instrument, influence risks becoming coercion.

The United States now confronts simultaneous pressures across continents. The Second World War demonstrated the capacity to sustain multi-theater engagement; the post-9/11 wars revealed the exhaustion that follows prolonged intervention. Iran, larger and geopolitically deeper, presents a scale that cannot be resolved by air power alone.

Carr’s “thereafter” waits patiently. Military victory may be swift; political reconstruction is slow. Bishara reminds us that deterrence sustains stability, while force risks unraveling it.

At the edge of a potential world war, the decisive question is not who strikes first, but who restrains longest.

History watches. And in places far from the battlefield, mothers wait for phone calls that may not come.

Asanga Abeyagoonasekera is a Senior Research Fellow at the Millennium Project, Washington, D.C., and the author of Winds of Change: Geopolitics at the Crossroads of South and Southeast Asia, published by World Scientific

Midweek Review

Live Coals Burst Aflame

Published

1 day ago

2026/03/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Live coals of decades-long hate,

Are bursting into all-consuming flames,

In lands where ‘Black Gold’ is abundant,

And it’s a matter to be thought about,

If humans anywhere would be safe now,

Unless these enmities dying hard,

With roots in imperialist exploits,

And identity-based, tribal violence,

Are set aside and laid finally to rest,

By an enthronement of the principle,

Of the Equal Dignity of Humans.

By Lynn Ockersz

Midweek Review

Saga of the arrest of retired intelligence chief

Published

3 days ago

2026/03/2

Sahan Weerasooriya

Retired Maj. Gen. Suresh Sallay’s recent arrest attracted internatiattention. His long-expected arrest took place ahead of the seventh anniversary of the bombings. Multiple blasts claimed the lives of nearly 280 people, including 45 foreigners. State-owned international news television network, based in Paris, France 24, declared that arrest was made on the basis of information provided by a whistleblower. The French channel was referring to Hanzeer Azad Moulana, who earlier sought political asylum in the West and one-time close associate of State Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan aka Pilleyan. May be the fiction he wove against Pilleyan and others may have been to strengthen his asylum claim there. Moulana is on record as having told the British Channel 4 that Sallay allowed the attack to proceed with the intention of influencing the 2019 presidential election. The French news agency quoted an investigating officer as having said: “He was arrested for conspiracy and aiding and abetting the Easter Sunday attacks. He has been in touch with people involved in the attacks, even recently.”

****

Suresh Sallay of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) received the wrath of Yahapalana Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, in 2016, over the reportage of what the media called the Chavakachcheri explosives detection made on March 30, 2016. Premier Wickremesinghe found fault with Sallay for the coverage, particularly in The Island. Police arrested ex-LTTE child combatant Edward Julian, alias Ramesh, after the detection of one suicide jacket, four claymore mines, three parcels containing about 12 kilos of explosives, to battery packs and several rounds of 9mm ammunition, from his house, situated at Vallakulam Pillaiyar Kovil Street. Chavakachcheri police made the detection, thanks to information provided by the second wife of Ramesh. Investigations revealed that the deadly cache had been brought by Ramesh from Mannar (Detection of LTTE suicide jacket, mines jolts government: Fleeing Tiger apprehended at checkpoint, The Island, March 31, 2016).

The then Jaffna Security Forces Commander, Maj. Gen. Mahesh Senanayake, told the writer that a thorough inquiry was required to ascertain the apprehended LTTE cadre’s intention. The Chavakachcheri detection received the DMI’s attention. The country’s premier intelligence organisation meticulously dealt with the issue against the backdrop of an alleged aborted bid to revive the LTTE in April 2014. Of those who had been involved in the fresh terror project, three were killed in the Nedunkerny jungles. There hadn’t been any other incidents since the Nedunkerny skirmish, until the Chavakachcheri detection.

Piqued by the media coverage of the Chavakachcheri detection, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration tried to silence the genuine Opposition. As the SLFP had, contrary to the expectations of those who voted for the party at the August 2015 parliamentary elections, formed a treacherous coalition with the UNP, the Joint Opposition (JO) spearheaded the parliamentary opposition.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) questioned former External Affairs Minister and top JO spokesman, Prof. G.L. Peiris, over a statement made by him regarding the Chavakachcheri detection. The former law professor questioned the legality of the CID’s move against the backdrop of police declining to furnish him a certified copy of the then acting IGP S.M. Wickremesinghe’s directive that he be summoned to record a statement as regards the Chavakachcheri lethal detection.

One-time LTTE propagandist Velayutham Dayanidhi, a.k.a. Daya Master, raised with President Maithripala Sirisena the spate of arrests made by law enforcement authorities, in the wake of the Chavakachcheri detection. Daya Master took advantage of a meeting called by Sirisena, on 28 April, 2016, at the President’s House, with the proprietors of media organisations and journalists, to raise the issue. The writer having been among the journalists present on that occasion, inquired from the ex-LETTer whom he represented there. Daya Master had been there on behalf of DAN TV, Tamil language satellite TV, based in Jaffna. Among those who had been detained was Subramaniam Sivakaran, at that time Youth Wing leader of the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), the main constituent of the now defunct Tamil National Alliance. In addition to Sivakaran, the police apprehended several hardcore ex-LTTE cadres (LTTE revival bid confirmed: TNA youth leader arrested, The Island April 20, 2016).

Ranil hits out at media

Subsequent inquiries revealed the role played by Sivakaran in some of those wanted in connection with the Chavakachcheri detection taking refuge in India. When the writer sought an explanation from the then TNA lawmaker, M.A. Sumanthiran, regarding Sivakaran’s arrest, the lawyer disowned the Youth Wing leader. Sumanthiran emphasised that the party suspended Sivakumaran and Northern Provincial Council member Ananthi Sasitharan for publicly condemning the TNA’s decision to endorse Maithripala Sirisena’s candidature at the 2015 presidential election (Chava explosives: Key suspects flee to India, The Island, May 2, 2016).

Premier Wickremesinghe went ballistic on May 30, 2016. Addressing the 20th anniversary event of the Sri Lanka Muslim Media Forum, at the Sports Ministry auditorium, the UNP leader castigated the DMI. Alleging that the DMI had been pursuing an agenda meant to undermine the Yahapalana administration, Wickremesinghe, in order to make his bogus claim look genuine, repeatedly named the writer as part of that plot. Only Wickremesinghe knows the identity of the idiot who influenced him to make such unsubstantiated allegations. The top UNPer went on to allege that The Island, and its sister paper Divaina, were working overtime to bring back Dutugemunu, a reference to war-winning President Mahinda Rajapaksa. A few days later, sleuths from the Colombo Crime Detection Bureau (CCD) visited The Island editorial to question the writer where lengthy statements were recorded. The police were acting on the instructions of the then Premier, who earlier publicly threatened to send police to question the writer.

In response to police queries about Sallay passing information to the media regarding the Chavakachcheri detection and subsequent related articles, the writer pointed out that the reportage was based on response of the then ASP Ruwan Gunasekera, AAL and Sumanthiran, as had been reported.

Wickremesinghe alleged, at the Muslim media event, that a section of the media manipulated coverage of certain incidents, ahead of the May Day celebrations.

In early May 2016 Wickremesinghe disclosed that he received assurances from the police, and the DMI, that as the LTTE had been wiped out the group couldn’t stage a comeback. The declaration was made at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute for International Relations and Strategic Studies (LKIIRIS) on 3 May 2016. Wickremesinghe said that he sought clarifications from the police and the DMI in the wake of the reportage of the Chavakachcheri detection and related developments (PM: LTTE threat no longer exists, The Island, May 5, 2016).

The LTTE couldn’t stage a comeback as a result of measures taken by the then government. It would be a grave mistake, on our part, to believe that the eradication of the LTTE’s conventional military capacity automatically influenced them to give up arms. The successful rehabilitation project, that had been undertaken by the Rajapaksa government and continued by successive governments, ensured that those who once took up arms weren’t interested in returning to the same deadly path.

In spite of the TNA and others shedding crocodile tears for the defeated Tigers, while making a desperate effort to mobilise public opinion against the government, the public never wanted the violence to return. Some interested parties propagated the lie that regardless of the crushing defeat suffered in the hands of the military, the LTTE could resume guerilla-type operations, paving the way for a new conflict. But by the end of 2014, and in the run-up to the presidential election in January following year, the situation seemed under control, especially with Western countries not wanting to upset things here with a pliant administration in the immediate horizon. Soon after the presidential election, the government targeted the armed forces. Remember Sumanthiran’s declaration that the ITAK Youth Wing leader Sivakaran had been opposed to the TNA backing Sirisena at the presidential poll.

The US-led accountability resolution had been co-sponsored by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe duo to appease the TNA and Tamil Diaspora. The Oct. 01, 2016, resolution delivered a knockout blow to the war-winning armed forces. The UNP pursued an agenda severely inimical to national interests. It would be pertinent to mention that those who now represent the main Opposition, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), were part of the treacherous UNP.

Suresh moved to Malaysia

The Yahapalana leadership resented Sallay’s work. They wanted him out of the country at a time a new threat was emerging. The government attacked the then Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, PC, who warned of the emerging threat from foreign-manipulated local Islamic fanatics on 11 Nov. 2016, in Parliament. Rajapakshe didn’t mince his words when he underscored the threat posed by some Sri Lanka Muslim families taking refuge in Syria where ISIS was running the show. The then government, of which he was part o,f ridiculed their own Justice Minister. Both Sirisena and Wickremesinghe feared action against extremism may cause erosion of Muslim support. By then Sallay, who had been investigating the deadly plot, was out of the country. The Yahapalana government believed that the best way to deal with Sallay was to grant him a diplomatic posting. Sally ended up in Malaysia, a country where the DMI played a significant role in the repatriation of Kumaran Pathmanathan, alias KP, after his arrest there.

Having served the military for over three cadres, Sallay retired in 2024 in the rank of Major General. Against the backdrop of his recent arrest, in connection with the ongoing investigation into the 2019 Easter Sunday carnage, The Island felt the need to examine the circumstances Sallay ended up in Malaysia at the time. Now, remanded in terms of the Prevention of terrorism Act (PTA), he is being accused of directing the Easter Sunday operation from Malaysia.

Pivithuru Hela Urumaya leader and former Minister Udaya Gammanpila has alleged that Sallay was apprehended in a bid to divert attention away from the deepening coal scam. Having campaigned on an anti-corruption platformm in the run up to the previous presidential election, in September 2024, the Parliament election, in November of the same year, and local government polls last year, the incumbent dispensation is struggling to cope up with massive corruption issues, particularly the coal scam, which has not only implicated the Energy Minister but the entire Cabinet of Ministers as well.

The crux of the matter is whether Sallay actually met would-be suicide bombers, in February 2018, in an estate, in the Puttalam district, as alleged by the UK’s Channel 4 television, like the BBC is, quite famous for doing hatchet jobs for the West. This is the primary issue at hand. Did Sallay clandestinely leave Malaysia to meet suicide bombers in the presence of Hanzeer Azad Moulana, one-time close associate of State Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, aka Pilleyan, former LTTE member?

The British channel raised this issue with Sallay, in 2023, at the time he served as Director, State Intelligence (SIS). Sallay is on record as having told Channel 4 Television that he was not in Sri Lanka the whole of 2018 as he was in Malaysia serving in the Sri Lankan Embassy there as Minister Counsellor.

Therefore, the accusation that he met several members of the National Thowheeth Jamaath (NTJ), including Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran, in Karadipuval, Puttalam, in Feb. 2018, was baseless, he has said.

The intelligence officer has asked the British television station to verify his claim with the Malaysian authorities.

Responding to another query, Sallay had told Channel 4 that on April 21, 2019, the day of the Easter Sunday blasts, he was in India, where he was accommodated at the National Defence College (NDC). That could be verified with the Indian authorities, Sallay has said, strongly denying Channel 4’s claim that he contacted one of Pilleyan’s cadres, over, the phone and directed him to pick a person outside Hotel Taj Samudra.

According to Sallay, during his entire assignment in Malaysia, from Dec. 2016 to Dec. 2018, he had been to Colombo only once, for one week, in Dec. 2017, to assist in an official inquiry.

Having returned to Colombo, Sallay had left for NDC, in late Dec. 2018, and returned only after the conclusion of the course, in November 2019.

Sallay has said so in response to questions posed by Ben de Pear, founder, Basement Films, tasked with producing a film for Channel 4 on the Easter Sunday bombings.

The producer has offered Sallay an opportunity to address the issues in terms of Broadcasting Code while inquiring into fresh evidence regarding the officer’s alleged involvement in the Easter Sunday conspiracy.

The producer sought Sallay’s response, in August 2023, in the wake of political upheaval following the ouster of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, elected at the November 2019 presidential election.

At the time, the Yahapalana government granted a diplomatic appointment to Sallay, he had been head of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI). After the 2019 presidential election, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa named him the Head of SIS.

The Basement Films has posed several questions to Sallay on the basis of accusations made by Hanzeer Azad Moulana.

In response to the film producer’s query regarding Sallay’s alleged secret meeting with six NTJ cadres who blasted themselves a year later, Sallay has questioned the very basis of the so called new evidence as he was not even in the country during the period the clandestine meeting is alleged to have taken place.

Contradictory stands

Following Sajith Premadasa’s anticipated defeat at the 2019 presidential election, Harin Fernando accused the Catholic Church of facilitating Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s victory. Fernando, who is also on record as having disclosed that his father knew of the impending Easter Sunday attacks, pointed finger at the Archbishop of Colombo, Rt. Rev Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, for ensuring Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s victory.

Former President Maithripala Sirisena, as well as JVP frontliner Dr. Nalinda Jayathissa, accused India of masterminding the Easter Sunday bombings. Then there were claims of Sara Jasmin, wife of Katuwapitiya suicide bomber Mohammed Hastun, being an Indian agent who was secretly removed after the Army assaulted extremists’ hideout at Sainthamaruthu in the East. What really had happened to Sara Jasmin who, some believe, is key to the Easter Sunday puzzle.

Then there was huge controversy over the arrest of Attorney-at-Law Hejaaz Hizbullah over his alleged links with the Easter Sunday bombers. Hizbullah, who had been arrested in April 2020, served as lawyer to the extremely wealthy spice trader Mohamed Yusuf Ibrahim’s family that had been deeply involved in the Easter Sunday plot. Mohamed Yusuf Ibrahim had been on the JVP’s National List at the 2015 parliamentary elections. The lawyer received bail after two years. Two of the spice trader’s sons launched suicide attacks, whereas his daughter-in-law triggered a suicide blast when police raided their Dematagoda mansion, several hours after the Easter Sunday blasts.

Investigations also revealed that the suicide vests had been assembled at a factory owned by the family and the project was funded by them. It would be pertinent to mention that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government never really bothered to conduct a comprehensive investigation to identify the Easter Sunday terror project. Perhaps, their biggest failure had been to act on the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) recommendations. Instead, President Rajapaksa appointed a six-member committee, headed by his elder brother, Chamal Rajapaksa, to examine the recommendations, probably in a foolish attempt to improve estranged relations with the influential Muslim community. That move caused irreparable damage and influenced the Church to initiate a campaign against the government. The Catholic Church played quite a significant role in the India- and US-backed 2022 Aragalaya that forced President Rajapaksa to flee the country.

Interested parties exploited the deterioration of the national economy, leading to unprecedented declaration of the bankruptcy of the country in April 2022, to mobilie public anger that was used to achieve political change.