Former Nepal Police chief Ramesh Chand Thakuri, who was on the run after being convicted in the multi-million rupees scam involving the purchase of armoured personnel carriers (APC) for the Nepali UN peacekeepers in Sudan, surrendered to the authorities on Thursday.
After remaining in hiding for two years, the former inspector general of police turned himself in before the Supreme Court. He had reportedly reached the court to file a review petition against the court’s order to send him to two and a half years in prison and pay Rs 40,000 in fines.
“Thakuri was taken to Dillibazaar Prison after the court registered his petition to review the judgement,” Devendra Dhakal, an information officer at the Supreme Court, told the Post.
On April 30, 2017, a division bench of the then chief justice Sushila Karki and Justice Biswombhar Prasad Shrestha had convicted top cops of Nepal Police, including Thakuri, in the case known as the ‘Sudan scam’ for their role in purchasing sub-standard APCs for the Nepali UN peacekeepers deployed in the Darfur region of Sudan.
An inquiry by the State Affairs Committee of Parliament at the time had concluded that Rs 310 million out of the total Rs 445 million set aside for the procurement of military vehicles had been embezzled with the involvement of politicians, senior police officials and contractors from Nepal and the UK.
Even the United Nations Mission in Darfur had declared the Nepali mission “defunct” for procuring substandard APCs from the Czech Republic, which were used during World War II.
In 2011, Thakuri was removed as the chief of Nepal Police after the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority found him guilty in the scam. He was the first Inspector General of Nepal Police to be removed from the post on charges of corruption.
Along with Thakuri, the court had also convicted former inspectors general Om Bikram Rana and Hem Bahadur Gurung, former additional inspector general Deepak Singh Thangden, former deputy inspector general Deepak Shrestha and other officials.
Rana, Gurung, Thangden and Shrestha had surrendered a month and a half after the court verdict.
Nayak Paudel covers sports for The Kathmandu Post. He previously worked at the Post (2018–19) and spent over five years at The Rising Nepal. His reporting spans crime, health, education, and social issues.
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