Sri Lankan court orders police to produce Rs 17.8 million found inside President’s House

A Sri Lankan court on Thursday asked the police to immediately produce Rs 17.8 million cash found by anti-government protesters when they stormed the President's House occupied by the then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

The Fort Magistrate's Court here instructed the Fort Police officer in charge to produce the money after the police informed the court that the amount was handed over to them by protesters who found the money inside the President's House on July 9.

Rajapaksa was evacuated from the President's House much before the protesters stormed the iconic building and occupied it.

The order comes as no report on the money was submitted to the court even after three weeks since Rs 17.8 million was handed over to the police, the Daily Mirror newspaper quoted Fort Magistrate Thilina Gamage as saying.

Gamage also ordered the police to submit a report on the recovered money.

Hundreds of anti-government protesters on July 9 stormed President Rajapaksa's residence in central Colombo's high-security Fort area after breaking the barricades, as they demanded his resignation over the island nation's worst economic crisis in recent memory.

Amidst the unprecedented anti-government protests, President Rajapaksa fled the country on July 13 to the Maldives. He then travelled to Singapore from where he emailed his resignation letter.

Meanwhile, four men arrested for unlawfully entering the President's House on July 9 were released on a personal bail of Rs. 500,000 each.

The suspects were arrested after a video was shared on social media showing the protesters counting the currency notes that were unearthed.

Sri Lanka, a country of 22 million people, is under the grip of an unprecedented economic turmoil, the worst in seven decades, crippled by an acute shortage of foreign exchange that has left it struggling to pay for essential imports of fuel, and other essentials.

The country, with an acute foreign currency crisis that resulted in foreign debt default, had announced in April that it is suspending nearly USD 7 billion foreign debt repayment due for this year out of about USD 25 billion due through 2026.

Sri Lanka's total foreign debt stands at USD 51 billion.