The Kathmandu District Court on Friday sent 16 people including former ministers Top Bahadur Rayamajhi and Bal Krishna Khand to jail after a hearing in a fake Bhutanese refugee scam.

A single bench of judge Prem Prasad Neupane passed the order after the end of a detention hearing that continued for around two weeks.

Deepak Dahal, information officer at the Kathmandu District Court, told the Post that the bench sent 16 of the 18 defendants in the refugee scam to judicial custody.

But the court ordered the release of Tanka Kumar Gurung and Laxmi Maharjan on bails of Rs1 million and Rs500,000, respectively, he said.

The court issued the order in the evening after lawyers from the two sides concluded their arguments on Friday afternoon. With the order, Rayamajhi will be suspended as a lawmaker.

Along with Rayamajhi and Khand, former home secretary Tek Narayan Pandey, former home minister Ram Bahadur Thapa’s security adviser Indrajit Rai, Khand’s personal secretary Narendra KC, former Nepali Congress lawmaker Aang Tawa Sherpa and Bhutanese refugee leader Tek Nath Rizal, among others, will remain in jail as their case continues in court.

Likewise, the scam’s accused masterminds Sanu Bhandari and Keshav Dulal will also remain locked up following the court order. Similarly, Sandeep Rayamajhi, the son of Top Bahadur Rayamajhi, Shamsher Miya, Ram Sharan KC, Govinda Chaudhary, Sandesh Sharma, Sagar Rai and Hari Bhakta Maharjan are the other defendants who will remain in jail.

The District Attorney Office Kathmandu on May 24 filed criminal cases at the District Court Kathmandu against 30 individuals accused in the scam. Of them, 12 including Prateek Thapa, son of CPN-UML vice-president Ram Bahadur Thapa and former home minister, are still at large.

They have been charged with four types of crimes—treason, organised crime, fraud and forgery. The accused have been charge-sheeted for collecting Rs288.17 million from 115 victims—ranging from Rs150,000 to Rs4.8 million each—by promising to send them to the US as Bhutanese refugees.

“The court has issued the order we wanted, the crimes they are accused of, are grave,” said Achyut Neupane, chief of the Kathmandu District Attorney’s Office. “We have argued that they cannot be released on bail as they are accused of serious crimes punishable by a sentence of imprisonment between over three years and 20 years.”

The court may remand a person believed to be guilty of any offence punishable by the sentence of imprisonment for life or any offence which is punishable by a sentence of imprisonment for a term exceeding three years, according to section 67 of the National Criminal Procedure (Code) Act, 2017.

Neupane, however, said that the defendants would still have the option to appeal at the High Court seeking release from jail on bail as per section 73 of the National Criminal Procedure (Code) Act, 2017.

As per the section, a petition may be filed to appeal a court hearing. “A person who is not satisfied with the order of detention, bail/bond, guarantee or bank guarantee, may file a petition to appeal the decision, up to one level,” it says.

The hearing on remand, however, was prolonged because of the sheer number of lawyers who debated on behalf of the defendants.

After the case was registered on May 24, the court took statements from the arrested defendants with many providing statements that differed from the ones given to the police.

Then, the government lawyers including Neupane, chief of the Kathmandu District Attorney’s Office, argued that hearings in the case should continue by keeping the defendants in prison because of the seriousness of the offences they have been charged with. They also showed evidence of monetary exchanges among the defendants.

Besides producing the evidence that was included in the charge sheet, lawyer Neupane had pointed out a letter sent by former home secretary Tek Narayan Pandey to someone seeking political intervention to save him from prosecution.

“Police have seized a letter Pandey sent to someone requesting political support from leaders like UML chair KP Oli and Nepali Congress chief Sher Bahadur Deuba,” said Neupane. “This also suggests involvement of Pandey and others in the scam.”

Besides Achyut Prasad Neupane, government lawyers including Mahesh Prasad Khatri, Janak Prasad Ghimire, Sitaram Aryal, Dinesh Bhattrai, Prakash Ghimire and Sur Bahadur Pariyar, Nirmala Marasini and Hira Lal Bholon argued on the behalf of the prosecutor, which is the government.

Some private lawyers also deliberated from the government’s side. On the other hand, over 100 lawyers debated on the behalf of the defendants and sought their release from detention.

Senior advocates including Harihar Dahal, Lalit Basnet, Mahadev Yadav, Raman Shrestha, Prem Bahadur Khadka, Sushil Pant and Ramesh Badal debated on the behalf of the defendants. As many as 34 lawyers defended former home minister Khand alone.

The majority of lawyers debating on behalf of the defendants argued that the government was prosecuting them on false charges and defendants were arbitrarily selected. They also argued that the accused were selectively prosecuted while some top leaders who were accused of involvement in the scam were not.

“Some people have been prosecuted because the accused named them while others have not been prosecuted even though they were similarly named,” said Shiva Prasad Rijal, a senior advocate, earlier told the Post. Rijal participated in the debate on behalf of Sanu Bhandari, one of the accused.

Recently, an audio tape appeared on social media suggesting former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s wife Arzu Rana also received cash from racketeers attempting to send fake Bhutanese refugees to the United States.

Ajaya Kranti Shakya, adviser to former prime minister KP Sharma Oli, also allegedly received Rs10 million, according to a defendant’s statement. Rana and Shakya have not been made defendants in the case.

Amid public uproar over alleged involvement of senior leaders of major parties, CPN-UML suspended its secretary and former deputy prime minister Rayamajhi, one of the accused in the case, from party position. But Khand continues to remain a central working committee member of the ruling Nepali Congress.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had closed the third-country resettlement of Bhutanese refugees in December 2016 after most of the refugees left for Western countries.

But the resumption of the verification process by the government for the refugees who were left out of the resettlement programme was guided by a malafide intention, experts say.

In 2019, the then government led by KP Sharma Oli had formed a task force under then joint secretary Bal Krishna Panthi to recommend ways to manage the Bhutanese refugees who remained in Nepal after the third-country resettlement programme ended.

The taskforce submitted a report by including 429 Bhutanese refugees who had been left behind. Later, the racketeers, in collusion with some top officials, prepared another report and added hundreds of other people to the list of refugees.

“We cannot assume that the state was unaware of the impossibility of third-country resettlement of the Bhutanese refugees left behind in Nepal,” Neupane, chief of the Kathmandu District Attorney’s Office earlier told the Post. “A malafide intent of some state actors who colluded with the racketeers is clearly evident here.”