Lanka's opposition presidential candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa leading in early results
Colombo: Sri Lanka's main opposition candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa was leading in the early presidential election results on Sunday morning, securing a massive support in the majority Sinhalese-dominated constituencies.
In the results declared by 4.30 AM, the former wartime defence secretary won postal votes of nine districts while the ruling party candidate Sajith Premadasa won postal votes of three districts.
Rajapaksa, 70, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) presidential candidate, is leading in the results declared so far, Colombo Gazette reported.
While New Democratic Front Presidential candidate Premadasa, 52, secured the highest votes in the Tamil-dominated North and parts of the East, Rajapaksa led in most areas in the Sinhalese-dominated South, it said.
In the result declared so far from the sole polling division in the south of the country, Rajapaksa has won 65 per cent against Premadasa's 28 per cent.
Premadasa has won three polling divisions, Jaffna, Nallur and Kayts in the Tamil region of Jaffna district by 85, 86 and 69 per cent against Rajapaksa's six, five and 17 per cent.
Postal votes are cast in advance by officials drafted for election duty on polling days. The remaining candidates who contested the election were far behind in numbers.
Sri Lankans voted on Saturday to choose a successor to President Maithripala Sirisena amid multiple poll-related incidents, including an attack on the minority Muslim voters, in an election that will decide the future of the country that struggles with security challenges after the Easter Sunday bombings and increasing political polarisation.
As many as 12,845 polling stations were set up across the country for 15.9 million voters.
A record 35 candidates were in the fray for the top post with the main contenders being former wartime defence secretary Rajapaksa and the ruling party candidate Premadasa.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake from the National People's Power (NPP) coalition is also a strong candidate. This poll will make record as the election with the largest number of polling stations and the longest 26-inch ballot paper.
Outgoing President Sirisena said he believed that "we were able to hold such a peaceful election because I remained independent".
According to observers, with pro-China Rajapaksa in the fray, India is keeping a close watch on the election results as its outcome will have a bearing on the country's presence in the Indian Ocean region where Beijing is increasingly making its inroads.
China, which has acquired Sri Lanka's Hambantota port in 2017 as a debt swap, has been ramping up its ties with the island nation and expanded its naval presence in the Indian Ocean with an established logistics base in Djibouti
China in July gifted a warship to Sri Lanka, in a growing sign of its deepening military cooperation with the strategically located island nation in the Indian Ocean.
The Lanka election took place nearly seven months after homegrown radicals pledging loyalty to the Islamic State terror group detonated suicide bombs at three churches and three posh hotels, killing 269 people, seriously hitting the tourism industry, one of the main forex earning sectors of the country.
The candidate who obtains over 50 per cent of the votes will win the presidency. The ballot also allows voters to choose their three top candidates in order of preference, which will determine the winner if no candidate secures over half the first place votes.
Those preferences will be used to tally votes for the top two candidates to decide the winner. Such a process has not happened in previous elections because one candidate has always crossed the 50 per cent mark.
In the election, Premadasa, the ruling United National party (UNP) candidate, banks on his 'man of the commoner' image - a legacy of his father Ranasinghe Premadasa, the country's president between 1989 and 1993 until the LTTE assassinated him in 1993.
Premadasa senior was considered as the "man of the poor". The Rajapaska senior's legacy of ending the Tamil separatist war has made him the darling of the Sinhala Buddhist majority.
His younger brother Gotabhaya was his top defence ministry official who supervised the military operations against the LTTE. While doing so he acquired the reputation of a ruthlessly efficient administrator.
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The new-age dacoity: Cyber fraudsters rob Delhi of Rs 1,250 crore in one year
New Delhi (PTI): A few lakh rupees here, a few crores there, and once as much as Rs 23 crore. With relentless regularity, cyber fraudsters have stolen a cumulative Rs 1,250 crore from unsuspecting victims in Delhi region alone in the last one year, officials said Monday.
The nationwide figure is believed to be around Rs 20,000 crore or as much as the budget of a small state.
The new-age dacoity once again came to the forefront of public consciousness last week with a Rs 14.85 crore fraud perpetrated on a senior citizen couple in Greater Kailash colony of New Delhi, leaving them nearly penniless and the community in shock at how easily the cyber thieves are able to manipulate their victims.
Repeated public service messaging by authorities has not deterred or reduced the crime. In 2024, police said the criminals -- almost always based in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos and working mostly on the behest of Chinese handlers -- collectively stole Rs 1,100 crore in Delhi.
The figure for 2025 jumped to about Rs 1,250 crore, a senior police officer said. The only silver lining is that the recovery rate too jumped from 10 per cent in 2024 to 24 per cent in 2025.
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That is of little consolation for 81-year-old Om Taneja and his wife Indira, 77, who were conned over a 16-day period through the now-familiar stratagem -- digital arrest, a non-existent tool in the law that the criminals have used with impunity over the last three to four years when the fraud was first started being observed.
"We have lost all of our life's savings now. The cyber fraudsters repeatedly threatened us with arrest and serious consequences," Om Taneja told PTI.
He said his wife was approached on WhatsApp by a caller who claimed to be from the telecom department. Using a tried-and-tested spiel that her phone was being used for illegal activities, the caller and his associates sucked the couple into a deepening web of deceit built on fear and their willingness to abide by the law.
While placed under "digital arrest" from December 24 to January 9, they gave away their entire life savings in several chunks of about Rs 2 crore, drawn from their savings accounts and by liquidating their mutual funds.
In the wake of the case, another senior police officer, explaining the modus operandi of such scammers, told PTI that digital arrest cases, along with investment frauds, have emerged as two of the most common ways in which people are losing their hard-earned money.
Investigators said most of these fraudsters operate out of Southeast Asian countries such as Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, where large-scale “scam compounds” run by Chinese handlers target victims across the world.
From these locations, the accused use illegal SIM box installations that allow international calls to be masked as local Indian numbers by bypassing telecom networks.
"The calls are actually routed from abroad but are made to appear as domestic calls using illegal SIM box devices, which helps the accused evade detection while creating fear and urgency among victims," the officer said.
The police said mule bank accounts continue to pose a major challenge, as they create multilayered money trails that are difficult to trace. Fraudsters based in India often assist overseas syndicates by providing mule accounts and SIM cards to launder stolen funds.
These accounts are typically opened by people from economically weaker sections, who hand them over to fraudsters in return for a commission.
To tackle the rising menace of cybercrime, the police said they have been regularly conducting cyber awareness programmes across multiple platforms, with a special focus on vulnerable sections such as senior citizens.
Recently, they launched a two-phase awareness drive titled ‘Santa ki Seekh’, under which citizens were educated about the risks of scanning unknown links after being prompted through QR codes.
Officials said coordination meetings are also being held regularly with bank officials to ensure greater due diligence and sensitisation of frontline staff.
In this connection, two bank employees were recently arrested for allegedly facilitating a cyber fraud by helping a gang open a fake current account using forged documents, which was used to divert and siphon off the proceeds of the crime.
Officials reiterated their appeal to citizens to immediately report cyber fraud on the national helpline number 1930, noting that early reporting significantly improves the chances of putting fraudulent transactions on hold and recovering the money.
Another officer said that people should report a cybercrime as soon as it happens, which increases the chances of getting the money back, as the transaction can be blocked within 24 hours.
Major Vineet Kumar, Founder and Global President of CyberPeace, told PTI that a local court in West Bengal had pronounced life imprisonment for nine individuals last year in the country's first conviction in a digital arrest cyber fraud case.
"We must accept the truth. India has had poor conviction rates for cybercrime for a long time. A majority of the cybercrimes are still not reported. Survivors may become discouraged and wonder, 'What's the point of reporting?' However, I constantly remind people that low conviction today does not equate to a lack of justice tomorrow.
"Digital evidence management, cyber forensics, and specialised cyber police units are all developing quickly. Every report makes the system stronger," he said.
