Former Sri lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa has blamed India, the US and European countries for his humiliating defeat in the January election. “It was very open, Americans, the Norwegians, Europeans were openly working against me. And RAW (India’s Research Analysis Wing),” Rajapaksa told the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post in an interview.
“Both the US and India openly used their embassies to bring me down,” Rajapaksa said ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s maiden visit to the country. A media report from Colombo soon after Rajapaksa’s defeat in the January 8 election had said that a RAW official was instrumental in uniting rival political parties — the Sri lanka Freedom Party (SlFP) and the United National Party (UNP) — against him during the polls. According to the report, the unnamed official was also asked to leave the country.