Amid escalating civilian protests, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa declared a state of emergency in the country on Friday, giving sweeping powers to security forces to arrest and detain suspects.

The move comes a day after hundreds of protesters gathered outside his house in the capital, chanting slogans demanding his resignation over an unprecedented economic crisis in the South Asian nation. Many angry protesters also tried to storm the President's residence, according to reports.

Rajapaksa said considering the prevailing situation in the country, an emergency was being declared “in the interests of public security”.

In a state of emergency, the military has the power to arrest and detain suspects for long periods without trial.

Protest turns violent

The protest in Sri Lanka began peacefully outside the President’s house on Thursday. According to participants, things turned violent after the police fired tear gas, water cannons and beat the demonstrators, BBC reported.

The demonstrators retaliated by throwing stones at police personnel and storming barricades. They have also been accused of setting ablaze two military buses, a police jeep, two patrol motorcycles, and a three-wheeler on Thursday.

An official told Reuters that at least two dozen police personnel were reportedly injured during the clashes.

Earlier in the evening, rights activists held a demonstration at a busy intersection in the capital carrying placards that read "No more corruption, go home Gota," and holding oil lamps, AFP reported.

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In Nuwara Eliya town, activists blocked Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa's wife Shiranthi from opening a flower exhibition.

Anti-government protests were also held in the southern towns of Galle, Matara and Moratuwa and in the northern and central regions.

On Friday, apart from the arrest of 53 demonstrators, police also detained five news photographers and tortured them at a police station, a charge the government said it will investigate, local media reported.

Despite the police crackdown, protests continued in the capital and other parts of the country. On Friday, the presence of security forces was beefed up.

What is happening in Sri Lanka?

In what could be one of the most painful downturns since its independence from Britain in 1948, Sri Lanka, with a population of 22 million, is facing severe shortages of essentials, sharp price rises and power failures.

The economic crisis was made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, which curtailed tourism and remittances. According to economists, the situation has worsened due to government mismanagement and years of accumulated borrowing, AFP reported.

Inflation stood at 18.7 percent in March, while food prices soared a record 30.1 percent, official data released on Friday showed.

The country has a $51 billion debt and has to pay nearly $7 billion this year. To save foreign currency to service its debt, Colombo imposed a ban on imports in March 2020.

There is diesel shortage in the country, which has sparked protests at empty pumps. Citizens are faced with 13-hour daily power cuts due to the shortage of diesel to power generators.

Several state-run hospitals have stopped routine surgeries due to the lack of life-saving medicines.

"Based on staff analysis, the fiscal consolidation necessary to bring debt down to safe levels would require excessive adjustment over the coming years, pointing to a clear solvency problem," Bloomberg quoted the IMF as saying about Sri Lanka in a report last month.

The Lankan government is seeking a bailout from the International Monetary Fund and is looking at borrowing more from India and China.

In 2019, a working paper by the Asian Development Bank said the country was an example of a classic twin deficit economy.

“Twin deficits signal that a country's national expenditure exceeds its national income and that its production of tradable goods and services is inadequate," Reuters citied the paper as saying.