After months of locking horns in Parliament over Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane’s alleged involvement in cooperative fraud, the government and the opposition parties have finally agreed to form a parliamentary committee to investigate the matter. This would not have been possible without the persistent calls of opposition parties, led by the Nepali Congress, often at the cost of disrupting the House business. It wouldn’t have been possible either without the solid investigative reporting by the mainstream media, including Kantipur daily, for which the Kantipur Media Group chairperson Kailash Sirohiya had to spend nine days in police custody as a victim of vendetta politics.

Now that the committee has been formed, the question is whether it will deliver. The seven-member body is led by Surya Thapa of the CPN-UML, the party that, for the longest period, stood firmly behind Lamichhane, dismissing all calls for the committee. Other committee members are Sarita Bhusal of the UML, Ishwari Neupane and Badri Pandey of the Congress, Lekhnath Dahal of the CPN (Maoist Centre), Shishir Khanal of the Rastriya Swatantra Party and Dhruba Bahadur Pradhan of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party. At a glance, the ruling majority has a clear upper hand in the committee.

What is distressing is that the committee’s terms of reference do not include Lamichhane’s name, who is at the eye of the storm in the fraud case. We should not forget that the alleged involvement of a deputy prime minister and home minister in embezzling hundreds of million rupees of common people’s hard-earned savings led to the committee’s formation. The inclusion of Gorkha Media Network, the company where he was managing director and where he allegedly parked the fraudulently acquired money, was the second best option, and the opposition parties were compelled to compromise on this score. Thankfully, the names of a slew of other cooperatives that have come into the radar for fraudulent transactions have been mentioned in the committee’s ToR. The idea, ultimately, is to provide justice to all victims across the country and punish the culprits.

The committee members should work earnestly to take the probe to a logical conclusion. Governments and coalitions come and go, in light of how Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has had to take the vote of confidence four times in less than a year and a half. Fair investigation will be vital for a credible parliamentary probe. Previous probe committees have had a poor record of either failing to investigate properly or sweeping the findings under the rug. The report of the parliamentary probe committee on the caste-killing of Ajit Mijar, for instance, is yet to be published even after eight, long years. The new committee to investigate cooperatives should look to change that image.

The investigation should neither be inspired by vendetta against anyone, including Lamichhane, nor by a desire to cleanse his name or those of anyone else found guilty of misappropriating people’s hard-earned money. It is thus vital that the committee, right at the start, builds an environment of trust by committing to a free and fair investigation. This should include open discussions on the matter and clear and consistent communication on the committee’s working and findings. Only then will the hundreds of thousands of victims of cooperative frauds get the justice they seek.