Angur GC, a former officer of the Nepal Police Central Investigation Bureau, who was charged with evidence tampering and torturing an innocent man to extract false confession in the Nirmala Pant rape and murder case, was released on bail by the Kanchanpur District Court on Wednesday.

“GC has been released on a combined bail of Rs900,000. Rs500,000 in torture case and Rs400,000 in evidence tampering case,” Hari Krishna Awasthi, the court registrar, told the Post.

GC had appeared before the court on March 24. With the court’s order to release GC, all eight police officials indicted in the Pant murder case are now out of custody.

On March 6, the Kanchanpur District Attorney’s Office had filed a case against the then chief of Kanchanpur district police, SP Dilli Raj Bista; DSP duo Angur GC and Gyan Bahadur Shetty; Inspector duo Jagadish Bhatta and Ekendra Khadka; Sub-inspector Hari Singh Dhami; Assistant Sub-inspector Ram Singh Dhami; and Constable Chadani Saud on charge of tampering evidence.

Four officers—Dilli Raj Bista, GC, Shetty and Khadka— were also accused of torturing Dilip Singh Bista in custody to make him admit to the crime.  

“The defence and the prosecutors have been summoned for another court hearing on April 11,” Awasthi said.

The accused officers could get less than 10 years of jail sentence if the court finds them guilty.

The defence attorneys have been arguing over the legitimacy of the case, citing that it was lodged after the expiration of the three-month statute of limitations.

“We have demanded three years jail sentence for the officers involved in evidence tampering and three to five years for those involved in torturing of an innocent man,” said Mohani Prasad Joshi, assistant joint-attorney at the Kanchanpur District Attorney’s Office. “It is the court who decides whether the case is legitimate or not.”

A report submitted by a nine-member probe committee led by Additional Inspector General Dhiru Basnyat, formed to look into the role of police officers who oversaw the widely criticised investigation process of the Nirmala murder case, had reported that 18 police officers admitted to negligence and failed bid to frame Dilip Singh Bista as the main culprit.

It has been eight months since 13-year-old Nirmala was found murdered after rape in Kanchanpur on July 26, 2018, but the perpetrator(s) are yet to be identified.