A Sri Lankan court on Thursday asked the police to immediately produce Rs 17.8 million in cash found by anti-government protesters when they stormed the President’s House occupied by the then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

The Fort Magistrate’s Court here instructed the Fort Police officer in charge to produce the money after the police informed the court that the amount was handed over to them by protesters who found the money inside the President’s House on July 9.

Rajapaksa was evacuated from the President’s House much before the protesters stormed it. The order comes as no report on the money was submitted to the court even after three weeks since Rs 17.8 million was handed over to the police, the Daily Mirror newspaper quoted Fort Magistrate Thilina Gamage as saying. Gamage also ordered the police to submit a report on the recovered money.

Hundreds of anti-government protesters on July 9 stormed President Rajapaksa’s residence in central Colombo after breaking the barricades, as they demanded his resignation over the island nation’s worst economic crisis in recent memory.

Amidst the anti-government protests, President Rajapaksa fled the country on July 13 to the Maldives. He then travelled to Singapore from where he emailed his resignation letter.