COLOMBO: Sri Lankan authorities have beefed up the security of President Maithripala Sirisena following an alleged plot to assassinate him, presidential officials said Thursday.
"People in charge have taken measures to strengthen his security.
Certainly his security has been beefed up," Shiral Lakthialaka, one of the presidential advisers, told reporters here.
On the probe about the alleged plot to assassinate the president, he said that political attempts are being made to undermine the credibility of the investigation by questioning the conduct of the man who had bared the plot.
"There is a concerted effort to undermine the investigation. This could be a political conspiracy," he said.
"We need a broad investigation into this," he added. An Indian national named M Thomas is currently under detention in Lanka for his alleged involvement in the plot.
News portal the economynext.com, quoting a ministerial source after a heated cabinet meeting Tuesday, reported that Sirisena had accused his senior coalition partner, the United National Party (UNP), of not taking seriously an alleged conspiracy to kill him and the former secretary to the ministry of defence, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa.
The minister, who declined to be named, claimed that the president said that India's external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) was behind the plot.
The Lankan Foreign Ministry Wednesday termed the reports "baseless and false".
President Sirisena called up Prime Minister Narendra Modi Wednesday and categorically rejected the media reports that he had accused RAW of plotting his assassination as "utterly baseless and false".