India had alerted Sri-Lanka of possible terror hits at churches and preliminary findings suggest the slain suicide bomber and chief of the National Tauheed Jamath Whavan Hashim alias Zahran Hashim had attempted to carry out blast at the Indian embassy and at the US embassy earlier this month, reports Daily Pioneer on April 23. However, given the tight security at these two installations, the bomber decided to hit three luxury hotels and two major churches taking a toll of over 200 and injuring about 500 others. The National Tauheed Jamat is a breakaway faction of Sri Lanka Tauheed Jamat, branch of Tamil Nadu Tauheed Jamat under the scanner of the Intelligence agencies at least since 2016. Sources in the security agencies said the Indian embassy in Sri Lanka is heavily fortified and armed with anti-aircraft batteries of a Central paramilitary force and has put in place a tight security cordon and sophisticated access control paraphernalia. Hashim is said to have undergone treatment earlier for mental illness and wanted to become a social worker in 2011. However, Hashim joined religious groups like the Sri Lanka Tauheed Jamat and subsequently got in touch with the Islamic State (IS) especially those based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and went on to become the ‘chief’ of Khorasan Sri Lanka of IS. Hashim has a follower base of nearly 400 radicals and the attack on the churches could be a tactical ploy to deflect attention of the aggrieved Buddhists against the Muslims who are lesser in number in the island nation than the former, sources said. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Colombo might have provided facilitation for logistics supplies to Hashim through its terror proxies like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) and its humanitarian assistance arm Jamat-ud-Dawah (JuD) that has been presence in Sri Lanka since the 2005 tsunami. The JuD had purchased a number of orphans for the purpose of radicalization from Sri Lanka and other countries hit by tsunami.The terror targets which include three luxury hotels-Shangri La, Kingsbury and Cinnamon Grand-and St Anthony Church Zion Church and St Sebastian church were identified after the failed bids at the Indian and American missions in Colombo.