Rajesh Vajracharya, personal secretary of the then Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, people including Olinik UML leader Ajaykranti Shakya, outgoing Foreign Minister Arju Rana, former Deputy Prime Minister Top Bahadur Rayamazhi, then Home Ministers Ram Bahadur Thapa and Balkrishna Khan, Khan's wife Manju and other high-ranking officials and political figures were revealed, even though the case reached the level of filing a case, but the investigation did not reach the level of the former Prime Minister.
What you should know
Despite the confirmation of political and administrative collusion at the center of the crime of making Nepali citizens refugees from Bhutan and sending them to America, there is still a question about the people at the center of power in the absence of a fair investigation.
Rajesh Vajracharya, personal secretary of the then Prime Minister and UML President KP Sharma Oli, people close to Oli UML leader Ajaykranti Shakya, former Foreign Minister Arju Rana, wife of another former Prime Minister and Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba, former Deputy Prime Minister Top Bahadur Rayamazhi, then Home Ministers Ram Bahadur Thapa and Balkrishna Khan, Khan's wife Manju Khan and other high-ranking officials and politicians were involved in the fake Bhutanese refugee case. People from the then Prime Minister Oli's secretariat and Arju were accused of accepting crores of rupees from the refugee gang, but they were not investigated.
In the midst of political interference, the case filed by the District Public Prosecutor's Office Kathmandu against 30 people including former Deputy Prime Minister and UML Secretary Rayamazhi, Congress leader and then Home Minister Khan, then Home Secretary Teknarayan Pandey, then Home Minister Thapa's security adviser Indrajit Rai, and the charges of crime against the state, organized crime, fraud and embezzlement has not been resolved. The case is pending in District Court Kathmandu. Two other supplementary cases related to this are also pending in the court.
Last time, the district court proceeded with the process to take this case to a continuous trial, but the trial was blocked again after the Jen-G demonstration. The members of the gang who were arrested in the refugee case (currently in jail) claimed that there were crores and crores of 'deals' and transactions in Singhdarbar, Baluwatar and Minister Quarter (Pulchok) when the then Prime Ministers Oli and Deuba were Prime Ministers according to the plan to take Nepali citizens as refugees to America. However, the two former prime ministers could not be investigated.
A suspect, Bechan Jha, who was absconding during the police investigation, was arrested in India on 15 June 2081. But soon after, Congress and UML agreed on power sharing. After that, the investigation on Jha also became shallow.
2 years ago, 30 people including Rayamazhi, Khan, then Home Secretary Teknarayan Pandey, former MP Angtawa Sherpa and then Home Minister Thapa's security advisor Rai were filed in District Court Kathmandu for racketeering, fraud, organized crime and crime against the state. Later, some of those who went to pre-trial detention were released on bail and on bail.
5 people including Keshav Dulal, who was already made a defendant on 9 Baisak 2081 and another suspicious character on 4 July 2081, were brought to the court on 29 July 2081. In addition to detention hearings/orders, all the three cases were put on hold, 4 times in 2080, 6 times in 2081 and 26 times in the 4 and a half months of 2082.
Initially, a case was filed against 30 people on 10 May 2080 based on the complaint of Gajendra Budhathoki, who was involved in the refugee case. Next year, on 9 Baisakh 2081, based on the complaint of people including Dafuri Sherpa, 5 people including Keshav Dulal, the defendant of the original case, and on 29 July 2081, a supplementary case was filed in the court against the sale of suspicious characters in the refugee case. The Zen-G movement took place when preparations were being made to take the latter two cases to trial.
The bench of District Judge Prem Prasad Neupane of Kathmandu ordered on 1st June 2080 to send 16 people including Rayamazhi, Khan, former secretary Pandey, Bhutanese refugee leader Teknath Rizal to prison and to release Tank Gurung, who are part of the gang's network, on bail of Rs 10 lakh and Lakshmi Maharjan on Rs 5 lakh. In July 2080, he appealed to the Patan High Court against the court's order to send him to prison. Hearing the appeal filed by the defendant on 15th November, the High Court ordered Haribhakta Maharjan, Narendra KC, Sandeep Rayamazhi, Teknath Rizal and Ram Sharan KC to be released on bail and Tank Gurung, Lakshmi Maharjan, Ashish Budhathoki and Keshav Tuladhar on a regular date.
Sandeep Rayamazhi was released on bail of Rs 30 lakh, Rizal, Maharjan and Ram Sharan on bail of Rs 15/15 lakh, Narendra KC and Shamsher Mian on bail of Rs 10/10 lakh. After a difference of opinion between two High Court judges, Janak Pandey and Prakash Kharel, on whether to keep former Home Minister Khan in custody or release him on bail, another hearing was scheduled for decision. On 28 November 2080, Khan was released from the Central Jail after a bench of Justice Krishnaram Koirala ordered him to be released on a bond of Rs 30 lakh.
The government did not appeal against the High Court's order to release Khan accused of serious crimes on bail, in a 'mysterious' manner to benefit the defendant. Khan took advantage of the Congress-UML government as there was no appeal from the Attorney General's Office against the order of the Supreme Court and he came out without a judicial trial from the Supreme Court. As a result of abuse of power, anger spread to the civilian level.
The defendants who were ordered to be remanded by the Supreme Court went to the Supreme Court. On 13 Baisakh 2081, the bench of Justices Kumar Regmi and Tek Prasad Dhungana ordered Angtawa and Gobind Chaudhary to be released on bail and Shamsher Mian to a normal date, and former Deputy Prime Minister Rayamazhi, former Secretary Pandey, middlemen Bhandari, Dulal, Sandesh Sharma, security advisor to the then Home Minister Rai and another middleman Sagar Rai were ordered to be remanded in custody. Bechan Jha is also under pretrial detention.
More than 113,000 people who were displaced from Bhutan and took refuge in Nepal were resettled in the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and other countries on the initiative of the United Nations and Nepal's major donor countries. The Office of the High Commission for Refugees in Nepal decided that the United Nations has stopped the third country resettlement program for the remaining refugees and informed the Government of Nepal about the process.
About 6,500 people who have been resettled in the third country are living in the refugee camps of Morang and Jhapa, so that they too will be resettled in the third country. By making the Nepalese citizens as refugees, the gang took the state power mechanism and the relevant authorities into their hands and started a business of collecting huge sums of money by making them Bhutanese refugees and sending them to America.
The former president of Transparency International, Padmini Pradhanang, says that such crimes and protection will not stop until the game of protecting all kinds of crimes and injustices, including the refugee scandal, and giving immunity to them is stopped. He said that even though the scandal tarnished the international image of the country, the parties in the government protected those who could not be investigated.
Extortion on visit visas
The trend of taking financial benefits from Tribhuvan International Airport and sending them abroad on visit visas is not new. The Abuse of Authority Investigation Commission had arrested the employees of the Foreign Employment and Immigration Department together 12 years ago. However, the network of settings in the name of visit visa has not been broken yet. "In the past, it has been seen that even high-level employees of the home administration have been connected to the nexus," says a deputy secretary, "No matter which government comes, it has not been stopped because the visit visa is like a milk cow." A year ago, the authority officer received a similar report, "Employees distribute bribes at the airport using the software itself, collecting up to 30 million in a day." Court verdict in the
visit visa case: the middleman is guilty, the officer who collects the money. Safi
Even after being arrested in the visit visa case, Bhattarai initially did not admit his involvement with the Commission officials. However, after getting some evidence from the analysis of technical aspects including 'Call Detail Record' (CDR), he said that he was not the only one involved in it. He also took the name of a senior official of the Home Administration. Later, the then Home Secretary Gokarnamani Duwadi was also investigated. Bimal Paudel, an officer working in the secretariat of the then Home Minister Ramesh Akhtar, was also an officer involved in human trafficking under the name of visit visa.
On 20 December 2080, immigration officer Narveer Khadka was arrested with two lakh rupees at Hotel Baltic outside the airport. A list taken by the middleman saying he was flying abroad was also found with him. A case was filed in District Court, Kathmandu on 18th January 2080, making Khadka also a defendant in that case. However, it was found that the writer had hacked the group with the same official Paudel.
The presence of a controversial officer in the secretariat, the lack of interest in the investigation when the authority first pointed it out, and the sudden recall of joint secretary Bhattarai while the investigation was going on, made even the writer suspicious. Even though Bhattarai was released on appearance bail on the first day in the evening, the investigation continued. Two days later, on 9th June, the Ministry of Home Affairs dismissed six immigration officials.
6 Naib Subbas assigned to the airport immigration office were pulled into the ministry. Similarly, on the same day, 9 employees of the Ministry of Home Affairs were also transferred to different places. Those who were transferred in this way included Bhattarai and those related to him. Home staff Prem Prasad Paudel and Virbhadra Joshi have been transferred to District Administration Office Kathmandu and Nar Bahadur Thapa to District Administration Office Banke. All three were working as Naib Subba.
Continued 'setting' in immigration: investigation stops, recovery does not stop
On June 30, two points were agreed with the government. After that, even though the Maoists did not disrupt the parliament, the RSVP and RPP continued. Speaker Devraj Ghimire continued to run the House. After getting into controversy, the writer tried to resign from the post of Home Minister. But then Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba stopped it. Under the leadership of former Chief Secretary Shankardas Bairagi, the government formed a 7-member 'High Level Study and Investigation Committee on Immigration and Visit Visa' on June 10 and gave a three-month deadline to submit its report.
The recently held cabinet meeting has decided to implement the report submitted by the inquiry committee led by Bairagi. A separate investigation is also underway by the authority. During the Commission's investigation, it was revealed that 6,000 Indian citizens were sent to third countries without a 'No Objection Certificate' (NOC) during Bhattarai's tenure alone. An officer of the Authority said that after the investigation revealed that they had taken money from Indians and flown to a third country in a 'setting', they are now preparing to register a case. He says that those Indian citizens who flew without NOC have left Kathmandu for America, Canada as well as European countries.
One thousand to two thousand US dollars were raised from those Indians. The investigation suspects that the amount reached from the middleman to the highest level of the home administration. "In the second phase, the top level is also investigated," says an investigating officer.
To fly to a third country from outside your country, you must get an NOC from the embassy of the country concerned. It has been found in the commission's investigation that even the accused who is on the wanted list of the gold smuggling case in India fled from the Tribhuvan airport. The Indian Embassy in Kathmandu had sent a letter to the Immigration Department to blacklist Jageshwar Shah and his son Asif Shah as they were involved in the 95 kg gold smuggling case on 6 March. However, it has been confirmed during the investigation that Jageshwar went to Dubai from Tribhuvan Airport the day after he was blacklisted. Asif had already gone abroad before receiving the letter from the embassy. Although the Immigration Department constituted a committee to investigate this, it was acquitted citing a technical error.
