Gotabaya Rajapaksa to be Sri Lanka's new President
Colombo: Sri Lanka's controversial wartime defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa is all set to lead the country after ruling party candidate Sajith Premadasa conceded the hotly contested presidential poll on Sunday, marking the return of the powerful Rajapaksa dynasty known for its pro-China tilt, amidst security challenges following the Easter Sunday terror attacks that killed 269 people.
Rajapaksa, 70, who will succeed President Maithripala Sirisena, urged his supporters to "rejoice peacefully".
"As we usher in a new journey for Sri Lanka, we must remember that all Sri Lankans are part of this journey. Let us rejoice peacefully, with dignity and discipline in the same manner in which we campaigned," the retired lieutenant colonel said in a tweet.
Rajapaksa had vowed to "restore relations" with Sri Lanka's top lender, China, if he wins the election, despite international concerns over the island nation's financial debt to the Asian superpower.
Premadasa, 52, meanwhile, was considered leaning more towards India and the US.
He conceded the presidential election to his rival even before the official results were announced by the Elections Secretariat. He also stepped down as the Deputy Leader of the ruling United National Party (UNP) with immediate effect.
"It is my privilege to honour the people's decision and congratulate Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa on his election," Premadasa said.
"I am grateful our citizens who voted for me. I am humbled that you placed your faith in me. Your support has been a fountain of strength throughout my political career," he said on Twitter.
"In light of today's decision by the electorate, I have decided to step down as Deputy Leader of the United National Party (UNP) with immediate effect," he said in a statement.
Rajapaksa stormed ahead of Premadasa in the tightly contested presidential election in the early results declared Sunday morning.
The retired lieutenant colonel, who was the top defence ministry bureaucrat for 10 years, swept the poll in the Sinhala majority districts while Premadasa garnered most of the votes from the Tamil dominated north and east of the country.
Rajapaksa is expected to be declared as the President of Sri Lanka for a five-year term in the evening with a majority of over a million votes, officials said.
The turnout in the election was more than 80 per cent.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is expected to step down after the result, is set to hold his final Cabinet meeting in the afternoon.
The current Parliament cannot be dissolved at least before February next year. Wickremesinghe cannot be removed unless he steps down.
It is believed that Rajapaksa, after taking over as the President, would appoint his elder brother and former strongman Mahinda as the Prime Minister.
Rajapaksa will replace Maithripala Sirisena as the country's next president for a five-year term. Sirisena had ended Mahinda's nearly a decade-long rule in 2015.
Premadasa, the son of assassinated president Ranasinghe Premadasa, is a seasoned politician with an experience of more than 25 years in the power corridors, enjoying the support of the minority Tamils with his 'man of the commoner' image.
Premadasa heavily banked on his 'man of the commoner' image - a legacy of his father 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. 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.
Rajapaksa's victory marks the return of the family to the pinnacle of power in the island after they were surprisingly ousted in the previous presidential poll.
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.
Beijing 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.
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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.
