The Janakpur High Court on Wednesday sentenced former lawmakers Laxmi Mahato Koiri, and Abhiram Sharma to five years in prison in the 2015 murder of an Armed Police Force (APF) officer during the 'Madhesh movement'.

A division bench of acting chief judge Tek Bahadur Kunwar and judge Murari Babu Shrestha handed down the verdict in the case involving the killing of Assistant Sub Inspector Thaman BK in Jaleshwar, Mahottari.

Koiri, a former House of Representatives member, and Sharma, a former provincial lawmaker, had both been suspended following the murder case.

The ruling overturns a December 2023 verdict of the Mahottari District Court, which had acquitted Koiri of the murder charge while sentencing Sharma to life imprisonment.

Koiri, who was elected to the House of Representatives from Mahottari-1 in the 2022 general election on a CPN-UML ticket, was accused of dragging BK from a police vehicle and killing him during protests in Jaleshwar in 2015.

The murder case named 28 defendants, including Koiri, while 25 others were separately charged with arson.

In the same case, the Mahottari District Court had sentenced Sharma, a member of the Loktantrik Samajbadi Party, and several other defendants to life imprisonment. Wednesday's High Court verdict reduced Sharma's sentence to five years.

The detailed reasoning behind the High Court's decision is yet to be made public.