In 2009, five Tibetans arrived at the German Embassy in Kathmandu carrying Nepal-issued travel documents and seeking visas to join relatives who had been granted asylum in Germany. They claimed they were recent arrivals from Tibet. But their documents soon raised a troubling question: how had newcomers to Nepal obtained official travel papers so quickly?

That question set off an investigation that exposed alleged abuse of Nepal’s travel document system, possible involvement of foreign ministry officials, hundreds of missing travel document booklets and a case that languished for years.

The case filed on Monday over passport offences alleges that Nepal’s travel document system was abused to provide government-issued papers to individuals who were not registered refugees in the country.

Investigators and prosecutors allege that five Tibetans linked to refugee camps in India were falsely portrayed as Tibetan refugees residing in Nepal to secure travel documents. The investigation has also uncovered questions over alleged financial dealings, missing government documents and why a case that came to the attention of authorities quickly took so long to reach court.

The allegations centre on foreign ministry joint secretary Pushpa Raj Bhattarai, who now heads the ministry’s Labour Migration and Nepali Diaspora Coordination Division.

Investigators allege that Bhattarai, who was serving as a section officer at the Department of Passports at the time, approved travel documents for five Tibetans from Indian refugee settlements after they were falsely portrayed as refugees residing in Nepal.

The Kathmandu District Attorney’s Office filed a passport offence case against Bhattarai on Monday, seeking imprisonment and fines based on the investigation by the Central Investigation Bureau.

Bhattarai has denied any wrongdoing. He told investigators that he did not know how the documents were prepared and that his signature may have been misused.

According to the charge sheet filed at Kathmandu District Court, Bhattarai and others illegally issued travel documents to Tibetan refugees under the pretext of family reunification, with the alleged aim of sending them to Germany.

Prosecutors have argued that the act constitutes an offence under Nepal’s passport laws.

Under the previous Passport Act of 1967, providing false statements or details to obtain a passport or allowing misuse of a passport could result in up to one year in prison or a fine. The revised Passport Act of 2019 allows a fine of Rs200,000 to Rs500,000, imprisonment of one to three years, or both for obtaining or attempting to obtain a passport or travel document through false information.

A second foreign ministry employee, then non-gazetted officer Bachhuram KC, was also found to have been allegedly involved in the process. However, prosecutors decided not to pursue charges against him because he died on August 20, 2019.

Although offices in Nepal or Nepali diplomatic missions abroad can issue travel documents to refugees residing in Nepal who have received government approval and submitted applications along with recommendations from the Ministry of Home Affairs, the charge sheet states that travel documents were issued to refugees living in camps in India based on forged documents.

The police investigation found that then-officer Bhattarai had issued travel documents, based on forged documents, in the names of Tenzin Namgyal Chungotsang (travel document no. A-026518), Tenzin Tendhar Chungotsang (A-026523), Pentsog Gongda Tsang (A-026225), Chime Gongda Tsang (A-026226), and Ngawang Gongda Tsang (A-026227).

The case filed at the court also seeks the cancellation of the travel documents issued to them.

The documents were issued by the Department of Passports on August 4 and August 14, 2009. Madhav Kumar Nepal was prime minister, Sujata Koirala was foreign minister, and Gyan Chandra Acharya was foreign secretary at the time the travel documents were issued based on allegedly forged documents.

Visa application that triggered the probe

The issue first surfaced when the five Tibetans applied for visas at the German Embassy in Kathmandu.

German consular officer Andrea Arslan became suspicious after reviewing the travel documents they had submitted. On April 2, 2010, she wrote to Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs asking it to investigate the documents instead of issuing visas.

The foreign ministry later forwarded the embassy’s letter to Nepal Police headquarters, which eventually reached the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) on July 12, 2011.

Tenzin Namgyal Chungotsang and Tenzin Tendhar Chungotsang had applied for family reunification visas on November 18, 2009. The three members of the Gongda Tsang, Pentsog Gongda Tsang, Chime Gongda Tsang, and Ngawang Gongda Tsang submitted their applications on December 23, 2009.

Both families claimed they were Tibetan refugees who had “recently” arrived from Tibet and wanted to reunite with relatives who had already received asylum in Germany.

Though DNA tests confirmed their claimed family relationships with the relatives living in Germany, German officials questioned whether their claims about their refugee status and residence history matched official records.

An investigation found that the Gongda Tsang family had been registered at the Dekyiling Tibetan settlement in Dehradun, India, since 1981. The Chungotsang family was also found to have links with the Tibetan refugee community in India.

The German Embassy also questioned why the established process under the Nepal-India understanding on Tibetan refugees had not been followed. Under the arrangement, Tibetan refugees generally process travel-related matters through the Tibetan administration in Dharamsala, India, with assistance from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The embassy sought verification from Nepal’s foreign ministry after doubts over how the applicants obtained Nepal-issued travel documents,

The ministry confirmed that the documents had been issued by the Nepal government.

However, when the embassy sought additional details from Nepal’s Department of Immigration, it was informed that the necessary recommendation documents required for issuing such travel documents had not been submitted.

During further questioning by embassy officials, the applicants allegedly said they had paid Rs400,000 to obtain each travel document from the foreign ministry and another Rs400,000 to leave Nepal through the airport.

The allegation of financial payments was included in the German Embassy’s complaint.

However, prosecutors decided not to include the financial transaction issue in the passport offence case and instead forwarded it to the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) for separate investigation.

No record of hundreds of missing travel documents

The investigation uncovered another serious issue: hundreds of travel document booklets that disappeared from government custody.

According to investigators, Bachhuram KC, who worked in the foreign ministry’s store section, took 500 travel document booklets from the ministry’s storage facility on July 10, 2009, claiming they were meant for Nepal’s diplomatic mission in Cairo, Egypt.

But investigators later found that the Nepali mission in Cairo had never requested those documents and that no such documents had reached the mission during that period.

Where the remaining documents went remains unanswered.

Before his death, KC told the Central Investigation Bureau that he had received the 500 travel document booklets.

“Reports had appeared in various newspapers that 500 documents were missing. I personally received those documents for issuing them to the concerned individuals,” KC said in his statement.

He also acknowledged that the handwriting on travel documents issued in the names of Tibetan applicants appeared similar to his own.

According to investigators, after KC completed the administrative process, Bhattarai approved the documents.

In his statement to the CIB in January 2026, Bhattarai claimed that his signature had been misused and placed on the documents without his consent.

However, forensic examination has already confirmed that the signatures were his.

Five Tibetan refugees received travel documents bearing Bhattarai’s signature on July 4, 2009.

Investigators suspect that the documents may have been misused to issue travel papers to additional Tibetan refugees as well. However, no detailed investigation has yet been conducted.

Nepal currently hosts around 12,000 Tibetan refugees who arrived from Tibet and settled in refugee camps across 12 districts, including Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Kaski.

A case that reached court after years

The German Embassy first raised concerns about the case in 2010.

Although the matter reached the CIB a year later, the investigation failed to make significant progress for years.

During that period, governments changed, police leadership changed, and officials linked to the case continued to progress in their careers.

Bhattarai, who is now a defendant in the case, was working in the Foreign Ministry’s Consular Division from August 4, 2009, with responsibility for issuing passports and travel documents.

During its renewed investigation, the CIB recorded Bhattarai’s statement on February 6 2026. However, police didn’t arrest Bhattarai immediately. Bhattarai has been listed as a “fugitive” in the case that was filed on Monday. He, however, remains listed on the Foreign Ministry’s website as the head of his division.

After the incident, Bhattarai rose from section officer to under-secretary and then joint secretary. He served at Nepal’s diplomatic missions in South Korea and New York before eventually returning to the Foreign Ministry as a division chief.

The CIB reopened the old file in June 2025 and resumed the investigation after years of inactivity.

In his statement to investigators, Bhattarai said he joined the Foreign Ministry as a non-gazetted first-class officer in 1995, became a section officer in 2007, later served as under-secretary and was promoted to joint secretary in January 2025.

Bhattarai has maintained that he does not know how travel documents were created for Tibetan citizens using allegedly false documents.

However, the disputed travel documents carry his signature, which forensic examination has confirmed.

“My signature must have been copied by someone with wrongful intentions. Someone else may have deliberately produced signatures resembling mine,” Bhattarai told investigators.

Questions beyond five travel documents

The case is no longer limited to the five travel documents issued to Tibetan applicants.

It has raised wider questions about how refugee travel documents are managed in Nepal and whether government officials themselves have enabled the misuse of state-issued papers.

The allegations come after another major refugee-related fraud case in which government officials were accused of helping Nepali citizens obtain fake Bhutanese refugee identities and facilitating their attempted resettlement to the United States.

In that case, the Kathmandu District Court recently convicted 16 people, including former deputy prime minister Top Bahadur Rayamajhi, former home minister Balkrishna Khand and former home secretary Tek Narayan Pandey.

The court found them guilty of offences including offences against the state, fraud, forgery and organised crime.

The case involving travel documents issued in the names of Tibetan refugees will now be decided by the court.

But the investigation has left a question unanswered: why did a case first flagged by a foreign embassy remain under wraps for so long, and why did it take more than 15 years for authorities to bring it before a court?