Nepal fake refugee scam: 2 ex-ministers, 21 others convicted

Kathmandu District Court has convicted two former ministers, Top Bahadur Rayamajhi and Bal Krishna Khand, along with 21 others in the fake Bhutanese refugee scam. They were found guilty of offences against the state in a scheme to defraud citizens.

Court Convicts Former Ministers in Major Scam

The Kathmandu District Court has convicted two former ministers along with 21 others in a fake Bhutanese refugee scam, finding them guilty of offences against the state. The court convicted former minister Top Bahadur Rayamajhi and former Home Minister Bal Krishna Khand in the case along with 21 others, court officials confirmed to ANI.

The police had formally registered a case against 30 people over the case three years ago. As per the court documents released upon delivering the verdict, the court has established that the accused were involved in a scheme that falsely promised to send Nepali citizens to the United States by portraying them as Bhutanese refugees.

Key Officials Found Guilty

Former Home Secretary Tek Narayan Pandey and Keshab Prasad Dulal, a former aide to former Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala, were also convicted of offences against the state.

Others found guilty of offences against the state and integrated offences include Sanu Bhandari, Sagar Rai, Sandesh Sharma, Indrajeet Rai, Govinda Kumar Chaudhary and Angtawa Sherpa. The court also found refugee leader Tek Nath Rizal guilty.

Meanwhile, Narendra KC, Shamsher Miya, Haribhakta Maharjan and Niranjan Kumar Kharel were convicted as accomplices in offences against the state.

Details of the Convictions

On the charge of document forgery, only Tek Nath Rizal, Keshav Prasad Dulal and Sanu Bhandari were found guilty, while all other defendants were acquitted on that count.

The court also convicted Keshab Prasad Dulal, Sanu Bhandari, Sagar Rai, Sandesh Sharma, Dr. Indrajeet Rai, Govinda Kumar Chaudhary, Angtawa Sherpa, Tek Narayan Pandey and Top Bahadur Rayamajhi as principal offenders in the organised crime charge.

The court is scheduled to determine the sentences at a subsequent hearing. The District Public Prosecutor's Office- Kathmandu had initially filed a 224-page charge-sheet at the Kathmandu District Court accusing them of 5 types of charges, including fraud, organised crime, and crime against the state. A claim amount of 288.4 million Nepali rupees was also registered along with the case.

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 were named in the court document.

How the Scam Was Exposed

The case of the fake Bhutanese refugee scam came to the limelight in April 2023 after the publication of an investigative piece through the grant of the Centre for Investigative Journalism- Nepal. With mounting pressure, the incumbent Home Minister Narayan Kaji Shrestha directed Police bodies to carry out the investigation.

The Initial Breakthrough

The scam slowly came to light after Police apprehended Tek Narayan Pandey, the incumbent Secretary at the Vice President's Office and former Home Secretary. Data and documents retrieved from Pandey's possession of Pandey busted the scam web, which has been completed for the first phase.

The data and documents retrieved by the police during the investigation exposed how Nepali's 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 with the police, noting that the fraudsters fleeced over Rs 232.5 million from them at 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.

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 USA.

Investigation and Background

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 and five million Nepali rupees per head, promising to send them to the US as Bhutanese refugees.

The Real Bhutanese Refugee Crisis

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. (ANI)

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Asianet Newsable English staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)