Nepal Police is likely to take the lead in investigating the gold smuggling scam following strong indications of organised crime being committed, said a senior official of the Department of Revenue Investigation.

The DRI on July 18 had seized a huge quantity of gold from Sinamangal, Kathmandu after the consignment had passed the airport customs undetected, and had launched an investigation.

Then it sent the gold, hidden in cartons of motorcycle brake shoes and electric shavers, to the Nepal Rastra Bank, where the yellow metal’s gross weight was found to be 155kg.

But the government is being criticised for not initiating an investigation for organised crime even after it was revealed that the smuggling was well-planned and taking place with the involvement of nationals from multiple countries.

Police had maintained that they had not conducted an investigation without the department sending them a formal letter to do so.

“As this is apparently a case of organised cross-border crime, the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Police will be involved in the investigation,” said Nawa Raj Dhungana, director general of the department. “We are discussing with the Office of the Attorney General on whether to involve the CIB in investigating organised crime or give it the lead role in the probe.”

As per Section 20 (2) of the Organised Crime Act-2013, if any agency other than the police receives a complaint of organised crime with evidence, such agency should immediately forward the complaint to a police office.

“If there are strong elements of organised crime, the CIB takes the lead in the investigation. But it is the DRI which leads probes into crimes where components of revenue leakage are more prominent,” said Dhungana. “In the latest case of gold smuggling, there are more components of organised crime. So the CIB is likely to lead the entire investigation.”

He said the DRI would soon write to the bureau to start an investigation for organised crime.

As per the Organised Crime Act-2013, if a person commits a serious crime on behalf of a criminal gang, on the instruction of the gang and for the benefit of such gang, it is organised crime.

Any act that attracts imprisonment of over three years and the offences related to corruption, money laundering and financing of terrorist activities are considered to be organised crimes.

The department has so far arrested 18 people with the latest gold seizure. It also raided a factory at Tokha in Kathmandu, a suspected site used by smugglers for melting gold.

Besides, it raided the warehouse of Ready Trade, a private firm, at Sorhakhutte in Kathmandu and seized 66 boxes of motorcycle brake shoes. Many of the brake shoes were found to be lighter compared to those seized at Sinamangal, raising suspicion that gold from the shoes had already been extracted.

The DRI also raided the house of Rakesh Kumar Adukia, one of the prime suspects in the smuggling case, as a part of efforts to find actual owners of the seized gold.

The department now plans to write to the police.

Police said that they would start investigation once the DRI formally writes to them and provides relevant documents. “We heard that there was a decision to ask the CIB to initiate investigation for organised crime,” said CIB spokesman Superintendent of Police Sanjaya Singh Thapa. “But we are yet to get a formal request and related documents from the DRI.”

The government faced questions for not immediately initiating an investigation for organised crime as the DRI had arrested the nationals of multiple countries in connection with the gold smuggling case, suggesting it was a transnational organised crime.

People from Nepal, India and China were arrested soon after the seizure last month. But it took the department over two weeks to conclude that it is in fact a case of organised crime.

Various reports blamed Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal for the government’s reluctance to involve police in the investigation. Earlier, Kantipur, the sister publication of the Post, reported that the CIB had uncovered the involvement of senior Maoist leader and former Speaker of House of Representatives Krishna Bahadur Mahara and his son Rahul in the smuggling of 9kg gold last year. But they were not prosecuted.

On December 25 last year, the airport customs office seized electronic cigarettes. Parts of those cigarettes were stolen from the warehouse of the customs office, prompting the CIB investigation. “We later found that the gold was concealed inside the electric cigarettes,” said SP Thapa.

During the investigation, police had confirmed a close contact between the Mahara duo and a Chinese national who was smuggling gold concealed inside electric cigarettes.

The main opposition, CPN-UML, has been demanding a high-level probe into the matter. Though the government has shown no interest in forming such a committee, it has now decided to investigate the latest smuggling episode for organised crime.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Dahal held a joint meeting with Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Narayan Kaji Shrestha, Home Minister Purna Bahadur Khadka, Attorney General Dinmani Pokharel, Inspector General of Police Basanta Kunwar, Central Investigation Bureau chief Kiran Bajracharya and DRI Director General Nawa Raj Dhungana, according to the officials privy to the developments.

At the meeting, the prime minister took stock of the progress made in the gold smuggling probe, said Attorney General Pokharel. “He instructed government agencies to expedite the investigation as per the law.”

At the meeting, DRI Director General Dhungana said there was sufficient ground to investigate the case as organised crime.

“I suggested that the department should write to the police to investigate the case after its chief clarified that there were elements of organised crime,” said Pokharel.

Some experts, including former Deputy Inspector General of Police Hemanta Malla Thakuri, had long been calling for an investigation for organised crime. “The nature of this scam leaves no doubt that it is a case of organised crime,” he told the Post.