Chitwan District Court on Friday remanded former Maoist commander Kali Bahadur Kham in judicial custody in connection with the murder of businessman Ram Hari Shrestha.

After two days of hearings on Thursday and Friday, Judge Dayaram Dhakal ordered that Kham be sent to prison until the investigation into the case is taken to a conclusion.

Shrestha, a restaurateur in Koteshwar, was abducted from Kathmandu on April 27, 2008 and his body was found on a bank of Trishuli River in Chitwan district a month later on May 25. The Maoists were staying in Shrestha’s house in Koteshwar on rent.

Kham, who had been on the run, was arrested from Thamel, Kathmandu on Tuesday.

According to Bishnu Prasad Acharya, registrar at the district court, Kham had refused his involvement in the crime.

However, Kham’s claim cannot be verified to be true given the statements of the witnesses, circumstances of the incident, postmortem report, and other immediately available evidence, Acharya said.

Kham was the then commander of the third division Maoist army, whose contact office had been set up in Shrestha’s Koteshwhar-based residence.

The late restaurateur was taken to Shaktikhor camp in Chitwan after Rs1.7 million and weapons had gone missing from the office.

Shrestha’s whereabouts were unknown until May 15, 2008 when Kham, commander of Maoist combatants’ Shaktikhor camp who was said to have lost the cash and the weapon, announced that Shrestha had died in Jutepani, Chitwan, one of the cantonments of the then Maoist army.