Parbat District Court on Tuesday convicted two people of embezzling more than Rs110 million of depositors of the Mata Pathibhara Cooperative in Kushma.

A single bench of judge Bidya Raj Poudel found cooperative chair Kishor Shrestha and computer software developer Pratiman Poudel guilty of misappropriating Rs111,190,322 worth of savings of depositors of the Kushma-based microfinance.

The duo have been tried in a cooperative fraud case and have been handed a non-bailable sentence, said district court registrar Raju Dhungana.

A probe committee, led by a monitoring officer at the District Registrar Office Cholakant Wagle, had found that the accused used fake borrowers to facilitate the crime.

The Wagle-led team had also found Kishor’s involvement in the embezzlement of depositors’ savings at another Parbat-based cooperative where his brother Bal Gopal Shrestha was the chair.

A case had been filed by the attorney’s office at the district court on the basis of the investigative team’s findings and complaints registered by the victims.

Kishor had been arrested in December last year but was later released after posting a bail of Rs200,000. However, Bal Gopal has been on the run since being accused of embezzling Rs290 million.

Along with the management committee, computer software developers were also found to be involved in the fraud. The developers allegedly erased records from the software to facilitate the crime, said Police Inspector Keshav KC. Pratiman Poudel was charged on the basis of the same.