By Purushottam P. Khatri, Kathmandu, Jan. 7: If all things move ahead according to the plan of the Department of Immigration (DoI), 122 Chinese nationals will be deported to China on Wednesday (January 8).

The Chinese were arrested for their alleged involvement in financial and cyber-crime against their home country staying in Nepal.

According to the Department, travel documents of all the 122 arrested nationals sent by the Chinese Embassy, Kathmandu were received at the Department on Monday.

“The Embassy has prepared the travel documents and sent it to us requesting to scrap all their passports they had with them,” Ramchandra Tiwari, director and spokesperson at the Department of Immigration, said.

According to Superintendent of Police (SP) Bel Bahadur Pandey at the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police, the police recovered the passports of only 26 arrested Chinese nationals while 96 other detainees lacked their passports.

A travel document of every foreign national is a must before their deportation to their respective country if they lack their passports.

In the travel documents, the arrested Chinese national’s visas will be regularised, SP Pandey said.

“On Wednesday, most probably the arrested Chinese nationals will be deported in two shifts – one in the evening and another by the same night. Two Chinese aircraft- China Eastern and China Southern will come to take them to China,” he said.

In China Eastern 42 Chinese will be deported in the first shift at around 6:00 pm and the remaining will be flown by China Southern airways at around 7:00 pm, according to the Immigration Department.  

The Department said that the Chinese Embassy had already taken permission from the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) for the landing of these two airways.

A joint police operation of the CIB, Metropolitan Police Range, Kathmandu and Crime Division, detained them on December 23, 2019. Most of the detained Chinese had come to Nepal on tourist visas.

On Sunday, the Kathmandu District Administration Office had released them charging Rs. 1,000 from each of them. Before taking them on remand, the police had charged them for indecent behaviour against Nepal Police personnel.