The investigation into the Nepal Children’s Organization land lease scam has entered a significant stage, with the Central Investigation Bureau issuing arrest warrants against 20 of the accused. The individuals against whom the warrants have been issued after a nod from the Kathmandu District Court include former office bearers of the organisation and representatives of business institutions that have benefitted from the scam. With the latest development, some of the organisation’s prominent individuals, including the then vice-chair Tulasi Narayan Shrestha, then general secretary Ganesh Bhakta Shrestha, then deputy general secretary Suman Shakya and then member Krishna Shankar Sah face arrest. The CIB has also issued arrest warrants against then chairperson of Brihaspati Vidya Sadan, Chiranjivi Tiwari, and others, including Pravin Raj Joshi, Murari Nidhi Tiwari, Abhinav Singhania and Siddharth Kedia.

The arrests follow an investigation on the complaint that 29 ropanis (14,753.25 square metres) of land belonging to the children’s organisation had been illegally leased out to Brihaspati Vidya Sadan school for Rs9 million a year. The school is known to have sub-leased five ropanis (2,543.66 square metres) to Rai School at a rate of Rs6 million a year. The land was leased to Brihaspati Vidya Sadan for 59 years in various instalments since 1992, when Vaidya was the organisation’s chairperson. Under his leadership, the organisation in 2015 leased the land to Brihaspati Vidya Sadan for another 43 years through a sub-lease deal 16 years before the existing lease expired. Brihaspati Vidya Sadan had also allegedly used the government land illegally to take a loan of Rs313.3 million. The Nepal Children’s Organization had on April 27 scrapped the lease deal and subsequently filed a case with the CIB against the individuals signing the lease as well as against the proprietors of Brihaspati Vidya Sadan.

Illegality of the lease apart, what is disturbing about the children organisation’s lease scam is that private entities have used the support system for the disadvantaged and orphan children to accumulate capital. Bishal Group, the mother organisation of the school that took the land on lease, even planned to build a 10-storey business complex on the land before it was stalled at the lawmakers’ intervention. Even as the children in the orphanage live substandard lives, the property at a prime location in Kathmandu continues to be misused. The arrest warrants, therefore, are a big step towards reclaiming the land that rightly belongs to the organisation and, by extension, the children.

Moreover, the children organisation’s lease scam is a disturbing reminder of other major land grab scams that have grabbed public attention over the past few years—those related to the Lalita Niwas and the Bansbari Chhala Jutta. Huge portions of both these public properties have over the decades been illegally transferred to private individuals and entities, often in collusion with government officials. There certainly are many more such cases of illegal land grabs across the country, and the government should work aggressively to get such properties back. Further, the media’s reporting on the Nepal Children's Organization, the Lalita Niwas and the Bansbari Chhala Jutta land grab scams have been laudable—in the true spirit of a public watchdog. There should be no let-up in this.