The Mahottari District Court on Wednesday sent former Madhesh provincial assembly member Kaushal Kumar Yadav to judicial custody in a murder case.

According to Nutan Jha, registrar of the court, a bench of judge Phaneshwari Ghimire sent him to custody following a detention hearing.

On Saturday night, police arrested Yadav on the charge of murdering Assistant Sub-Inspector of Police Thaman BK during the Madhesh agitation in 2015 and produced him before the district court on Sunday.

The court ordered him to pay Rs5,000 bail in an arson case, said registrar Jha.

According to police, Yadav was arrested when he tried to flee following an accident in Pokharbhinda of the district.

Yadav, a former provincial lawmaker of the Janata Samajbadi Party-Nepal, is accused of lynching the injured APF officer in Jaleshwar during the Madhesh agitation on September 11, 2015. The suspects, along with Yadav, had allegedly dragged injured officer Thaman BK from an ambulance and killed him while he was being rushed to Janakpur for treatment.

Earlier, the court sentenced seven people to life imprisonment in the case, but it kept Yadav’s case on hold.

Pradeep Sah, Sanjay Kumar Sah, Mohan Thakur, Rama Shankar Mishra, Abhiram Sharma, Surendra Pandey, and Dharmendra Raya were sentenced to life, while the court acquitted federal lawmaker Laxmi Mahato Koiri of the CPN-UML.

Among them, Pradeep and Sanjay are serving jail sentences while others are on the run.