Sri Lanka crisis: How President Gotabaya's rule ended in a Singapore hotel

In this file photo taken on November 22, 2019, Sri Lanka's new President Gotabaya Rajapaksa (right) and his Prime Minister brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, pose for a group photograph after the ministerial swearing-in ceremony in Colombo. Millions of rupees in cash left behind by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa when he fled his official residence in the capital will be handed over to court on July 11, 2022, police said. - AFP

SINGAPORE, July 17 (The Straits Times/ANN): A police outrider and a security escort. A luxury limousine. A 20-minute ride down Singapore’s East Coast Parkway to the downtown hotel where he had been booked into for the night.

That was the last presidential ride of 73-year-old former Sri Lankan army lieutenant colonel-turned-politician Gotabaya Rajapaksa, once a hero to his people as the steadfast defence secretary who fashioned a huge battlefield victory that quelled a quarter-century of ethnic insurgency with brutal force.