Move Against Fraud

In yet another major anti-corruption move, the government has reopened the case related to the notorious Lalita Niwas land scam after conducting a detailed study and investigation into it. The Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police has arrested seven persons for their alleged involvement in illegally transferring the ownership of government land located in Lalita Niwas, Baluwatar into the name of private individuals. Those arrested include former election commissioner Sudhir Shah, owner of Bhat Bhateni Supermarket Min Bahadur Gurung, former employees at the Dilli  Bazaar-based  Land  Revenue  Office – Kaladhar Deuja, Gopal Karki, Hupendra  Mani  KC,  Surendra  Man  Kapali and Dharma Prasad Gautam. However, former chief of the Dilli Bazaar Land Revenue Office Deuja and two other former employees KC and Kapali were released, citing the last year’s Supreme Court interim order. The police are expected to apprehend more persons in this connection. On Wednesday, the police had presented them before the Kathmandu District Court, seeking their remand in custody. 

The government has given a go-ahead to the Nepal Police to prosecute the persons involved in the Lalita Niwas land grab scandal two weeks after the Kathmandu District Court sent 16 individuals involved in the fake Bhutanese refugee scam to the judicial custody. It is one of the big frauds involving the top politicians and bureaucrats. The police began to investigate the case after a government-formed committee in 2018 revealed that 113 ropanis of land out of 285 belonging to the state were illegally transferred to some individuals’ names. In December 2021, the CIB investigated the case and submitted its report to the Kathmandu District Government Attorney's Office making over 300 individuals as defendants. However, the Attorney's Office returned the report to the CIB, pointing out the need for further investigation into the case. 

The CIB had recommended that prosecutions of those involved in the scam should be initiated by January 11, 2022 as per the Criminal (Code) Act 2017. Section 283 of the Code stipulates that the statute limitation for case of forgery of government documents is two years from the date of its knowledge. But the District Attorney Office stated that implicated persons could be prosecuted as per the General Code-2020 as the land grab scam took place before the introduction of the Criminal (Code) Act-2017. In February 2020, the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) had filed cases against 175 people. Of them 110 were indicted for their involvement in corruption and 65 were accused of illegally grabbing land and demanded to return it to the government. Former deputy prime minister and minister for physical infrastructure and transport Bijay Kumar Gachhadar, former land reforms ministers Dambar Shrestha and Chandra Dev Joshi and three former government secretaries were also arrested in this connection but the court released them on bail.

With the new round of arrests, the CIB is likely to complete the investigation process as these arrestees were the key figures in forging the documents to change the ownership of lands in the private individuals. Meanwhile, Minister for Communication and Information Technology Rekha Sharma has said that anyone involved in the scam would be brought to book, she said, adding that the government made this decision as per its commitment to maintain good governance and contain corruption. The legal action against the alleged fraudsters has raised the public hope that the government is capable of rooting out corruption and other anomalies in the country.