Nepal court sends 16 to judicial custody in fake Bhutanese refugee scam

Kathmandu [Nepal], June 16 : The Kathmandu district court on Friday sent 16 defendants including a former Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister to judicial custody in a fake Bhutanese refugee scam.
The court made the preliminary verdict over the case and sent Top Bahadur Rayamajhi, former Deputy Prime Minister, and Bal Krishna Khand, former Home Minister to jail thus making it one of the high-profile cases of Nepal.
A single bench of Justice Prem Prasad Neupane delivered the verdict late on Friday evening passing the court hours following the conclusion of a marathon detention hearing that went on for nearly a fortnight.
"16 out of the 18 indicted on the charge of their involvement in the refugee scam has been sent to judicial custody. All of them have been sent to the Sundhara-based central jail," Deepak Dahal, information officer at the Kathmandu District Court told ANI over the phone.
Two of the indicted in the case to be released on bail are Tanka Kumar Gurung and Laxmi Maharjan who have been slapped with the amount of NRs 1 million and half a million Nepali rupees, respectively.
"All the defendants will remain in judicial custody until the court delivers a verdict over the case. However, they can appeal with at high court against their latest verdict and seek release on bail," Dahal added.
The District Attorney Office Kathmandu on May 24 filed criminal cases at the District Court Kathmandu against 30 individuals allegedly involved in the refugee scam.
They have been charged with four types of crimes- treason, organized crime, fraud and forgery. The accused have been charge-sheeted for collecting Nrs. 288.17 million from 115 victims ranging from Nrs. 200,000 to Nrs. 4.8 million each-promising to send them to the US in the guise of Bhutanese refugees.
According to the charge sheet of the attorney's office, the accused had been indicted for crimes against the state as they were involved in offences provisioned in sections 51 (1) and 2 (a) of the Criminal Code Act-2017.
As per the section, nobody should act against national interest or encourage others to do so and nobody should act in a way that impairs the country's image internationally.
The charge sheet said that their acts proved to be an offence against the state as turning Nepalis into Bhutanese refugees impaired Nepal's international image and prestige. The prosecutor had sought punishment as per section 51 (4a) of the Criminal Code Act-2017 for all the accused.
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 also are now sent to jail. Amongst those in judicial custody includes exiled Bhutanese refugee leader Tek Nath Rizal.
Others arrested over the case are: Keshav Dulal, Sanu Bhandari, Tanka Kumar Gurung, Sandesh Gurung, Sagar Rai, Sandeep Rayamajhi (Son of Top Bahadur Rayamajhi), Indrajit Rai, Bal Krishna Khand's personal secretary Narendra KC, Ram Sharan KC, Govinda Chaudhary and Shamsher Miya
The Kathmandu District Court has issued arrest warrants for former home minister Ram Bahadur Thapa's son Prateek, Indrajit Rai's son Niraj and other intermediaries.
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.
A 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, 2022, 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.