Sri Lanka’s Gotabaya Rajapaksa returns weeks after fleeing island

Sri Lanka’s deposed President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has returned home weeks after fleeing the crisis-hit country, officials said.

The 73-year-old former leader landed in the capital, Colombo, on a Singapore Airlines flight from Thailand in the early hours of Saturday, local media reports said.

Rajapaksa resigned in July after tens of thousands of protesters angered by a debilitating economic crisis stormed his office and residence.