Former President Rajapaksa Admitted to ICU; Wife and Eldest Son Detained Over Financial Charges

According to The Hindu, former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa was admitted to hospital on the morning of October 12 due to an emergency condition and is currently being monitored in the intensive care unit. His party, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), confirmed in a statement that the 80-year-old Rajapaksa was taken to hospital earlier that morning, and the facility has not disclosed the specifics of his condition or the cause of the medical emergency.

The former head of state's hospitalization comes as multiple members of his family face independent investigations over alleged financial irregularities and misappropriation of public funds. Citing relevant probes, The Hindu reported that Namal, Rajapaksa's eldest son and a senior SLPP opposition legislator, was detained in September as part of an investigation into suspected financial misconduct, while his wife Hiranya was taken into custody last week in a separate case involving alleged misappropriation of public funds.

Rajapaksa served as Sri Lankan president from 2005 to 2015 and subsequently took office as prime minister. During his presidency in 2009, government forces defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), ending a civil war that had dragged on for nearly three decades. However, when Sri Lanka plunged into a severe economic crisis in 2022, mass shortages of goods, soaring prices and administrative failures triggered large-scale protests, forcing his younger brother and then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa from power. In 2024, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, leader of the National People's Power (NPP), which won elections on an anti-corruption platform, assumed the presidency and pledged to pursue corruption and misappropriation allegations dating back to the previous administration.

The Hindu noted that it remains unclear whether Rajapaksa's hospitalization will have any impact on his family's legal proceedings, and the specifics of his condition have also not been made public.