With interrogation of suspects and other evidence pointing to the involvement of many women in the Easter Sunday bombings, the Sri Lankan government may end up banning ‘burqa’ and ‘niqab’, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Quoting a highly placed government source, the Daily Mirror said the government was planning to implement the move in consultation with the mosque authorities and that several Ministers had spoken to President Maithripala Sirisena on the matter.

It had been pointed out that ‘burqa’ and ‘niqab’ were never part of the traditional attire of Muslim women in Sri Lanka until the Gulf war in the early 1990s “which saw extremist elements introducing the garb to Muslim women”, the daily said.

Defence Ministry sources said that a number of female accomplices of the suicide bombers in Dematagoda, a Colombo neighbourhood where three policemen were killed, too had escaped wearing burqas.