The petition filed against the decision to amend the charge sheet of Rastriya Swatantra Party President Ravi Lamichhane has been scheduled for presentation in the full bench.

The first hearing has been scheduled in the bench of Justices Nripadhwaj Niraula, Nityanand Pandey and Shrikant Poudel on Thursday. The then Attorney General Savita Baral had granted permission to amend the charge sheet of 50 defendants including Lamichhane in money laundering and organized crime cases.

Dinesh Tripathi, Yubaraj Safal and Abhas Regmi had filed a writ petition against the order. The single bench had issued a show cause order in the writ petition, while the joint bench had sent it to the full bench, saying that there was a serious issue of constitutional interpretation.

The writ petition seeks to quash the decision of the Attorney General's Office, calling it 'prima facie illegal, malicious and arbitrary'.     

Attorney General Bhandari had decided on 30 Poush 2082 to amend the charge sheet in the cases filed against Lamichhane in the Kaski, Kathmandu, Rupandehi and Parsa district courts, so that the claims of 'organized crime' and 'wealth laundering' no longer stand. 

In that decision, the argument was presented that Lamichhane was charged on the basis of political vendetta and that the interests of the savers should be given priority.  Although Section 36 of the Code of Criminal Procedure was used as the basis for amending the charge, the writ petitioner claimed that this was in fact an act of 'withdrawing the case'.