This Colombo `bomber’ was a Sinhalese

On the day of the blast, it looked like a typical LTTE operation — a repeat of sorts of the blast which killed Industrial Development Minister C V Gooneratne and 22 others on June 7. Though there was some confusion even then on the sequence of events, a government statement the same day said categorically that an LTTE suicide bomber had targeted a military bus and missed.

But a Sri Lankan national identity card found around the mangled body did not connect. It showed the victim was a Sinhalese, one Pathmasiri Medhis. The police reached his home in a village near Colombo and his wife identified the body. She was picked up for interrogation.

One explanation could be that Medhis was simply a victim caught up in the explosion caused by a bomb hurled at the bus. But DIG Daya Jayasundara, who is leading the probe, doesn’t seem to agree. He told the press that it seemed Pathmasiri Medhis agreed to carry the bomb for the LTTE as he was hard-pressed for money. The police have, however, not established when and how he could have come in contact with the LTTE. The police have said the explosives case were carried on the bicycle. But would he have tried to ram the cycle to the Air Force bus even if it meant certain death? Did he know what exactly he was carrying? If not how did the bomb go off exactly when the Air Force bus was passing?

One theory is that the bomb, though carried by Mendhis, was triggered by remote control. But so far police have denied this `obvious’ explanation. The development is cause for worry for the police battling to prevent more blasts in Colombo. The focus of most police investigations — and pre-emptive operations — are the Tamil youth in Colombo, particularly the recent arrivals from the north. After the blast which killed Gooneratne, the police carried out a series of raids in Tamil-dominated areas. About 60 Tamil students from an engineering college were picked up for interrogation. By using a member of the Sinhalese community, the LTTE might be making things harder for the security forces.