Kathmandu District Court on Thursday remanded Sandeep Rayamajhi, an accused in the fake Bhutanese refugee scam, to three days in judicial custody.

Rayamajhi, the son of CPN-UML Secretary and former minister Top Bahadur Rayamajhi, was arrested from Butwal on Wednesday night.

He was produced before the court seeking judicial remand to investigate the case.

Sandeep is accused of taking Rs10 million from the racketeers allegedly for preparing documents in collusion with government officials.

A total of eight people including Tek Narayan Pandey, who was currently working as a secretary at the Vice President’s Office and previously as Home Secretary, and other officials have been arrested so far on the charge of their alleged involvement in the scam. An arrest warrant has been issued against former minister Rayamajhi as well.

On June 14, 2022, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Nepal Police had launched an investigation into a criminal group involved in a case of fraud. The group had allegedly been scamming people for years by promising to send them to the US as Bhutanese refugees.

The government action was in response to a case filed by the victims at the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority against the group a few months earlier. The case was brought to the Kathmandu Valley Crime Division only in June 2022 after which the investigation was launched.

The group has allegedly swindled over 875 people from different places in Nepal of millions of rupees.

The police earlier arrested Keshav Dulal, Sanu Bhandari, Sagar Thulung Rai, Tanka Gurung and Sandesh Sharma Pokhrel as a suspected prime accused in the case. All of them had strong political connections.

According to police, the suspects have admitted to collecting between one to five million rupees per head from many Nepalis by promising to send them to the US as Bhutanese refugees.