A once powerful intelligence chief in Sri Lanka is said to be in critical condition after suffering what his family describes as “inhuman treatment” while in custody for alleged complicity in the Easter terror attack of 2019, which killed 269 people.

Retired Major General Suresh Sallay’s wife, Manori, says her husband was targeted because the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) government eventually wants to arrest former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who had chosen Sallay as the country’s spy master.

Government investigators are probing allegations that Sallay, a long-time intelligence operative, conspired with Islamist radicals in connection with the April 21, 2019, bombings to create an atmosphere of fear, which helped Rajapaksa sweep elections months later. 

Rajapaksa, seen as a Sinhalese strongman after militarily crushing the Tamil Tigers, named Sallay, a Malay Muslim, to head the powerful State Intelligence Service (SIS). The appointment, his family admits, triggered a fair amount of professional jealousy.

Sallay, now 58, has repeatedly denied any links to the Islamists. He asserts he was attending a National Defence College course in India when he is assumed to have met the terrorists who set off a string of bombs in multiple churches and hotels in Sri Lanka. 

‘They want to see him dead’ 

One of Sallay’s lawyers, former cabinet minister Udaya Gammanpila, alleges that Sallay has been subjected to “unprecedented torture” since his arrest on February 25, 2026, in an attempt to break him and drive him to self-harm. 

 “They [the government] know he has nothing to do with the Easter bombings. They have realised the truth,” Gammanpila told this writer, just before Sallay’s hospitalisation on Sunday (June 7). “The government is in a very difficult situation. They are fabricating a story for their........

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