India, Aug. 1 -- Sri Lanka's former police chief Pujith Jayasundera and the then top bureaucrat in the Ministry of Defence, Hemasiri Fernando, were sentenced to death on Friday over the 2019 Easter Sunday attack, which killed more than 270 people.

The High Court here found both of them guilty of criminal dereliction of duty for failing to act on prior intelligence that could have prevented the attacks.

The bombings were a series of coordinated suicide attacks on churches and luxury hotels which killed 279 people, including 45 foreigners, on April 19, 2019.

Jayasundera and Fernando were arrested in 2019 and held in custody for four months before being released on bail.

They were indicted in November 2021 for their negligence of prior i...