The Central Investigation Bureau of the Nepal Police on Sunday arrested three individuals in connection with the Lalita Niwas land scam.

According to Senior Superintendent Dinesh Acharya of the bureau, Baburaja Maharjan, Ghaman Kumar Karki and Shivaji Bhattarai were arrested on Sunday.

Acharya informed that an investigation into the scam revealed that Maharjan is one of the fake tenants, Bhattarai was the then Kathmandu Metropolitan City ward number 4 secretary and is currently an official at the metropolis, and Karki was an employee at the Department of Survey.

The CIB informed that Karki as survey official had recommended that the land was not government property during the expansion works of the residence of a VVIP of Baluwatar when Madhav Kumar Nepal was the prime minister. Following Karki’s recommendation, the ownership of over 14 ropanis of land was transferred to various fake tenants and other private individuals.

The Kathmandu District Court on Wednesday had remanded four people, who were arrested by the bureau on Tuesday, to seven days in police custody including former election commissioner Sudhir Shah, owner of Bhatbhateni Supermarket Min Bahadur Gurung; and former employees of Land Revenue Office Dharma Prasad Gautam and Gopal Karki.

They are accused of forging government documents with the intent of transferring the ownership of the government land located at Lalita Niwas, Baluwatar, in the name of private individuals.

The police had arrested seven accused on Tuesday. Three of them —Kaladhar Deuja, Surendra Kapali and Hupendra Mani KC— were released later in the day citing a stay order issued by the Supreme Court on August 4 last year that had prevented their detention for investigation.

Lalita Niwas covers around 300 ropanis [around 15 hectares] of land and includes the areas of the prime minister’s residence, Nepal Rastra Bank’s central office and some other VIP residences.