High court orders Nepali Rupees 3 million bail for release of former home minister indicted in fake Bhutanese refugee scam

The Patan High Court on Thursday ordered the release of Nepal's former Home Minister Bal Krishna Khand on NRs 3 million bail in the fake Bhutanese refugee scam case.

The Patan High Court on Thursday ordered the release of Nepal's former Home Minister Bal Krishna Khand on NRs 3 million bail in the fake Bhutanese refugee scam case. A single bench of Judge Krishnaram Koirala ordered the release of Khand, who now is expected to be released on Friday morning after depositing the bail amount. Khand had appealed to the court challenging the decision of Kathmandu District Court to remand him to judicial custody in the fake Bhutanese refugee case.

Thursday's order over the release-on-bail comes after earlier division amongst the judges in the bench overseeing the bail application. Earlier on December 1, a bench of judges including Janak Pandey and Prakash Kharel remained divided on whether to release the former Home Minister on bail or uphold the judicial custody.

Back then, Judge Pandey had opted for bail while Kharel was on the side to continue the judicial custody. After the division amongst the judges over the case, it was then forwarded to a third judge to decide. Thursday's decision comes amidst the assurance of Nepali Congress President and former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's claims that Khand will be released soon. In a party meeting, Deuba had announced that Khand soon will be released from jail in the case.

The secretariat of Deuba was not available to comment on the issue when attempted to be approached. Earlier on May 24, the Kathmandu District Court had registered a case against 30 people which included former ministers and several bureaucrats to jail after a hearing in a fake Bhutanese refugee scam.

Later on, June 16, the Kathmandu District Court sent 16 people including former minister Khand and another sitting MP from opposition CPN-UML Top Bahadur Rayamajhi to jail after a series of hearings. Those indicted and sent to judicial custody in one of the high-profile cases of Nepal, the fake Bhutanese Refugee scam also had appealed for release on bail.

But recently, on December 1, the Patan High Court rejected the appeal and upheld the decision of June 16 to send those appealers including the former minister Top Bahadur Rayamajhi to judicial custody in the same case. Besides Rayamajhi, the bench refused to release the then home minister Ram Bahadur Thapa's adviser Indrajit Rai, former home secretary Tek Narayan Pandey, Keshav Prasad Dulal, and former Nepali Congress lawmaker Aang Tawa Sherpa.

Also, middlemen involved in the case- Sanu Bhandari, Sandesh Sharma, Govinda Kumar Chaudhary and Sagar Rai-were also denied bail. The court ordered authorities to release Sandeep Rayamajhi, son of former deputy prime minister Rayamajhi, on a bail of Rs 3 million, and Bhutanese refugee leader Tek Nath Rizal, Ram Sharan KC and Hari Bhakta Maharjan on bail of Rs 1.5 million each.

Likewise, bail amounts for Narendra KC and Shamsher Miya have been fixed at Rs 1 million each. On the other hand, Laxmi Maharjan, Ashish Budhathoki, Tanka Kumar Gurung and Keshav Tuladhar have been released without bail. The District Prosecutor's Office in Kathmandu on May 24 had filed 224 paged charge-sheet at the Kathmandu District Court including 16 those in police custody and 14 absconders.

As per the charge sheet, those arrested have been accused of 5 types of charges including fraud, organized crime, crime against the state, official corruption and integrated crime. A claim amount of 288.4 million Nepali rupees also was registered along with the case. Moreover, the second phase of the fake Bhutanese refugee scam is still underway, the officials said.

The first phase of the investigation involved 2 former ministers, a former House speaker, government administrators and their intermediaries. Former Home Minister and opposition CPN-UML leader Top Bahadur Rayamajhi, Nepali Congress leader and former Home Minister Bal Krishna Khand, former speaker Ang Tawa Sherpa, and former Home Secretary Tek Narayan Pandey have been named in the court document who also are in police custody. Amongst those in judicial custody include exiled Bhutanese refugee leader Tek Nath Rizal.

The case of a fake Bhutanese refugee scam came to the limelight in April after the publication of an investigative piece through the grant of the Center for Investigative Journalism- Nepal. With mounting pressure, the incumbent Home Minister Narayan Kaji Shrestha directed Police bodies to carry out the investigation.

The scam slowly came to understanding after Police apprehended Tek Narayan Pandey, the incumbent Secretary at Vice President's Office and former Home Secretary. Data and documents retrieved from the possession of Pandey busted the scam web which has been completed for the first phase. The data and documents retrieved by Police during the investigation exposed how Nepalis were swindled out of millions of rupees in return for sending them to the United States as Bhutanese refugees.

A total of 106 victims have registered complaints to the police noting that the fraudsters fleeced over Rs 232.5 million from them over different times. The case further came into the limelight when an arrest warrant was issued against chief opposition CPN-UML Secretary Top Bahadur Rayamajhi, his (Top Bahadur) son Sandeep and Prateek Thapa, the son of former Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa.

The police investigation has unearthed the facts that government officials have been helping the racketeers to obtain the fake document from the Home Ministry which worked as certification for them to send Nepali nationals as Bhutanese refugees to the US. On June 14 last year, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Nepal police launched an investigation into a criminal group involved in a case of fraud. The group had allegedly been scamming people for years by promising to send them to the US as Bhutanese refugees.

The government action was in response to a case filed by the victims at the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority against the group a few months earlier. The case was brought to the Kathmandu Valley Crime Division only in June 2022 after which the investigation was launched. The group has allegedly swindled over 875 people from different places in Nepal of millions of rupees. The police investigation found suspects collecting between one to five million Nepali rupees per head promising to send them to the US as Bhutanese refugees.

After 1990, Nepal saw a huge influx of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese nationals who were expelled from their country by the Bhutanese government in a massive ethnic cleansing drive. The refugees were kept in several refugee camps in Morang and Jhapa districts.

After a series of bilateral talks between Nepal and Bhutan failed, the international community led by the UN refugee agency started resettling the refugees in third countries, mostly in the US and Europe. Between 2007 and 2016, the UNHCR helped resettle more than 113,500 Bhutanese refugees in eight countries in one of the largest resettlement programs globally.

Nepal's Home Ministry had formed a task force to find out the ways for remaining Bhutanese refugees who were denied resettlement. The investigative report by CIJ disclosed the infiltration by a government official- Rai in the report where he managed to manipulate the number of "left out" refugees for resettlement. (ANI)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)