Police on Thursday arrested former CPN-UML lawmaker Laxmi Mahato Koiri, a day after the Janakpur High Court sentenced him to five years in prison for the 2015 murder of Armed Police Force Assistant Sub Inspector Thaman BK.

Koiri was arrested at around 6pm in front of the UML party office in ward 5 of Gaushala Municipality, Mahottari district, said Senior Superintendent of Police Prabhu Dhakal, spokesperson for the Madhesh Province Police Office.

He has been taken into custody at the Mahottari District Police Office and will be produced before the court on Friday.

On Wednesday, a joint bench of acting chief judge Tek Bahadur Kunwar and judge Murari Babu Shrestha of the Janakpur High Court sentenced Koiri and former Madhesh Province Assembly member Abhiram Sharma to five years in prison for BK’s murder.

The case stems from the killing of BK on September 11, 2015, when he was deployed during the Madhesh movement in Jaleshwar, Mahottari. Prosecutors accused Koiri of dragging the APF officer from a police vehicle before he was killed.

In December 2025, the Mahottari District Court had acquitted Koiri and another accused, Pawan Kapar, while sentencing Sharma and several others to life imprisonment. The high court overturned the acquittal, convicted Koiri, and reduced Sharma’s sentence to five years.

Koiri, who was elected to the House of Representatives from Mahottari-1 in the 2022 general elections, was suspended from Parliament after police sought his arrest in the case.