COLOMBO: Sri Lanka's former president Mahinda Rajapaksa was admitted to a hospital on Monday for urgent medical care and is being kept under observation in the intensive care unit, his party said.

The 80-year-old leader was admitted to hospital in the morning, Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) said.

He is in the ICU, where doctors are keeping him under observation, it said.

Rajapaksa's hospitalisation comes amid legal proceedings involving his family, with his wife Shiranthi and elder son Namal facing separate investigations over alleged financial irregularities.

Namal Rajapaksa, a parliamentarian and senior figure in the opposition SLPP, was remanded in September in connection with an investigation into alleged financial wrongdoing.

His mother was also remanded last week in a separate case involving the alleged misuse of public funds.

Mahinda Rajapaksa served as Sri Lanka's president from 2005 to 2015 and later as prime minister.

He remains a prominent figure in the country's politics and was president when government forces defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009, ending the island nation's nearly three-decade civil war.

The Rajapaksa family's political fortunes suffered a major setback during Sri Lanka's economic crisis in 2022, when mass protests over shortages, soaring prices and economic mismanagement forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Mahinda's younger brother, to leave office.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who leads the National People's Power (NPP) coalition, was elected in 2024 on an anti-corruption platform and has pledged to pursue allegations of corruption and misuse of public funds involving figures from previous administrations.