By Ruwan Weerakoon
(Lanka-e-News -2026.June.09, 4.30 PM) A retired senior intelligence officer's account raises uncomfortable questions about competence, patronage, and accountability at the heart of Sri Lanka's military intelligence establishment.
Within Sri Lanka's intelligence community, reputations are built quietly — through informant networks cultivated over years, field operations that never reach a press release, and the hard, unglamorous work of counter-intelligence. By that measure, according to a retired high-ranking military intelligence veteran who spoke on condition of anonymity, Suresh Sallay was never quite what his rank suggested.
"He was mostly a desk officer," the source said bluntly. "Administration. That was his domain."
The characterisation matters because Sallay, who would eventually rise to Director of Military Intelligence (DMI) and later State Intelligence Service (SIS) director.
According to the source, Sallay's advancement owed less to operational distinction than to proximity to power, specifically, his relationship with Kapila Hendavitharana, who served as Director of Military Intelligence (DMI) before becoming Chief National Intelligence Officer (CNIO).
"Sallay used to carry tales to Hendavitharana," the source alleged. "That was the relationship."
During the war years, when LTTE cadres were detained, Sallay participated in interrogations. But even there, the source questions his effectiveness, suggesting his intelligence product was largely sourced through intermediaries rather than cultivated networks. "He never engaged seriously in counter-intelligence against the LTTE. He didn't have the informants. Only third parties."
The consequence, the source claims, was institutional damage that outlasted the war itself. Talented, capable officers unwilling to work under Sallay's management style applied for transfers out of intelligence regiments entirely. "Many skilled officers left because of him," the source said. "Good people, gone."
Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka — the army commander who prosecuted the final military campaign against the LTTE. apparently reached his own conclusions about Sallay's field capabilities. Rather than integrating him into operational intelligence structures, Fonseka posted him to the Military Intelligence camp at Girithale, Polonnaruwa.
That posting carries additional weight today. The Girithale facility has featured in the long-running investigation into the enforced disappearance of journalist Pradeep Ekneligoda, who vanished on the eve of the 2010 presidential election—evidence presented in proceedings before the Permanent High Court-at-Bar has linked the Girithale camp to Ekneligoda's detention. Sallay's presence at that facility during the relevant period has been a subject of judicial scrutiny.
Among the more pointed allegations made by the source is that Sallay's singular technical capability was computer hacking — a claim that, if accurate, contextualises the surveillance and cyber-related allegations that have since attached to his name.
"That is what he was actually capable of," the source said. "Hacking computers."
The allegation intersects with broader concerns raised by civil society and opposition politicians about the misuse of state intelligence infrastructure for political surveillance — concerns that predate Sallay's tenure at SIS but intensified during it.
The source also makes an allegation that will be sensitive in the current political environment: that during Sallay's tenure as DMI, Sinhala junior officers and other ranks were treated harshly, while Muslim officers and soldiers were favoured. "This is not a secret in the army," the source stated.
[Editorial note: This is a single-source allegation. It should be attributed as such and held pending corroboration before publication, or published with clear attribution language — "a senior former intelligence official alleged." Given Sri Lanka's ethnic political landscape, this claim carries significant potential for misuse and requires careful editorial judgment.]
The Hendavitharana Question: Shangri-La, 2019
The source's account also raises questions about Kapila Hendavitharana — the patron whose favour, by this account, made Sallay's career possible. During the war, Hendavitharana reportedly petitioned then-Secretary of Defence Gotabaya Rajapaksa for an appointment as Defence Attaché to the Sri Lankan Embassy in Paris — a posting that, had it materialised, would have taken him comfortably out of the country.
He did not go to Paris. Instead, by Easter Sunday 2019, Hendavitharana — by then retired from active military service — held a senior security role at the Shangri-La Hotel, Colombo. The Shangri-La was one of the primary targets of the coordinated suicide bombings that killed over 260 people on April 21, 2019.
The question of how intelligence and security failures at that level occurred — and who bore command responsibility — has never been fully answered in a public forum. Hendavitharana's role that morning remains a thread that investigators and journalists have not fully pulled.
What the source's account suggests, when read alongside the existing public record, is not a story of individual bad actors but of a system in which patronage displaced competence, loyalty to superiors was rewarded above field performance, and accountability — for disappearances, for surveillance abuses, for security failures — has remained elusive.
Sallay, currently facing judicial proceedings, has denied wrongdoing.
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by (2026-06-09 00:28:26)
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