Why Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksas are being investigated for corruption and crimes

Colombo, Sri Lanka – A court in the Sri Lankan capital has extended the custody of the wife of Sri Lanka’s powerful former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was arrested last week over allegations that her charity misused donations collected for a children’s hospital.The October 7 arrest of Shiranthi Rajapaksa, 73, dealt a huge blow to the once powerful family that ruled Sri Lanka for nearly two decades until they were overthrown in a youth-led uprising in 2022.A month before Shiranthi’s arrest, her 40-year-old parliamentarian son Namal Rajapaksa, who is also the national organiser of the Rajapaksa-controlled Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party, was arrested over bribery charges. He remains in custody.Here’s all you need to know:Who are the Rajapaksas?The family, based in the stronghold of Hambantota district in southern Sri Lanka, counts Mahinda, 80, as its charismatic patriarch.Elected prime minister in 2004 and president the next year, Mahinda is adored by many among the country’s majority ethnic Sinhala Buddhists for crushing the Tamil separatist rebels who waged a 26-year-long civil war that ended in 2009.In the campaign against the now-defunct Liberation Tigers of Tamil E...