Scores protest in Nepal demanding action against refugee scammers and corrupt

Kathmandu [Nepal], May 13 : A large number of people on Saturday held a protest in Kathmandu demanding action against refugee scammers and the corrupt.
The demonstration comes in light of the arrest of the former Home minister Bal Krishna Khand amid allegations of high-level involvement in sending Nepalese citizens as fake Bhutanese refugees to the US. The protesters held placards and shouted slogans calling for accountability and non-interference from any front as the police continues their investigation.
Biplav Adhikari, one of the demonstrators, told ANI, "The web of corruption is quite wide and goes deep. The ongoing investigation should not be diverted or stopped midway just because another issue of corruption has come to light. Though I am from the youth wing of the Nepali Congress, I am here to raise my voice against those who abused power. They should be identified and booked, no matter what post they hold. The corrupt don't belong to any party. They should be held accountable for their actions."
Scores of people from various walks of life assembled at Narayanchaur, an open field, holding up placards and raising slogans urging the authorities not to spare anyone involved in scams. Politicians, civil society members, professionals and people from various sectors and age groups took part in the demonstration.
The protesters were seen handing over flowers to security personnel as a token of gratitude to Nepal Police for arresting the accused in the Bhutanese refugee scam. So far, police have arrested 12 people, including the former home minister and a former home secretary.
People have taken to the streets of late to step up pressure on the government to carry out an independent probe into everyone allegedly involved in the fake Bhutanese refugee scam and other corruption cases.
Earlier, on May 10, Nepal Police arrested Bal Krishna Khand, former Home Minister and leader of Nepali Congress, in connection with the fake refugee scam. Khand has since been in jail, with the court giving police a custodial extension of three days.
The case, which came to the limelight last month, started after the publication of an investigative piece through the grant of the Centre for Investigative Journalism-Nepal. Faced with mounting pressure to act, the incumbent Home Minister Narayan Kaji Shrestha directed police bodies to carry out an investigation.
The scam slowly came to the fore after the 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 is still under investigation.
The data and documents exposed how people were swindled of millions of rupees in return for sending them to the United States as Bhutanese refugees. The case further came into the limelight when an arrest warrant was issued against the secretary of the chief opposition party, CPN- UML, Top Bahadur Rayamajhi, his (Top Bahadur) son Sandeep and Prateek Thapa, the son of former Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa.
Out of them, only Sandeep is in judicial custody for allegedly taking Nepali Rupees 10 million in bribes for assisting the racketeers to prepare the documents. Top Bahadur Rayamajhi and Prateek Thapa are on the run.
The Nepal Police have also arrested Indra Jit Rai, adviser to former Home minister Ram Bahadur Thapa. Rai is also indicted for helping the racketeers obtain the fake document from the Home Ministry, which worked as certification for them to send Nepalese citizens 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 notice of the Kathmandu Valley Crime Division only in June 2022 after which an investigation was launched.
The group has allegedly swindled over 875 people of millions of rupees from different places in Nepal. During the investigation, it was found that the suspects collected between one to five million Nepali rupees per head, promising to send the unsuspecting victims 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 as part of 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 programmes globally. Nepal's Home Ministry had formed a task force to find out the ways to rehabilitate Bhutanese refugees denied resettlement.
The investigative report by CIJ disclosed the infiltration by government official Rai in the report, where he managed to manipulate the number of "left out" refugees for resettlement.