The Maoist-affiliated Young Communist League has demanded the property of Lokman Singh Karki, chief of the anti-corruption commission, be made public.

The call from an outfit of the ruling UCPN (Maoist) comes at a time when the Karki-led Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority is probing the property of senior party leader Krishna Bahadur Mahara on the charge of amassing wealth illegally while holding public office. The YCL questioned the sources of income of the CIAA chief commissioner and commissioners arguing that their tenures were not free of controversy. “They should also face action if they are found involved in corruption. Those knee-deep in graft should not implicate others committed to serving people,” YCL Chair RC Sharma said on Sunday.“The CIAA should be impartial in dealing with corruption cases instead of implicating [leaders] based on their political ideology,” said Sharma.

In the first week of December last year, the CIAA summoned 29 leaders including Maoist General Secretary Mahara, bureaucrats and civil society leaders on the charge of illegal income. A corruption case has already been filed at the CIAA against top Maoist leaders on the charge of misusing state funds allocated for their former combatants.

In the complaint filed at the CIAA, the CPN-UML-aligned Youth Association Nepal claims that the Maoist leadership had embezzled around Rs4 billion by presenting “fake combatants”.

The YAN charges UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, then Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai, and leader Mahara with financial irregularities. YAN members said the step was taken after some Maoist youths had urged initiatives to expose corruption in the Maoist cantonments.

The United Nations Mission in Nepal in 2007 verified 19,602 Maoist combatants. However, it later came to light that some 3,000 combatants were missing when the Special Committee recounted them. The Maoist party had been receiving monthly salaries and allowances in the name of the missing combatants until their regrouping in December 2011.

The Maoists formed an internal panel to look into the matter after some combatants came down heavily on the party leadership during the seventh plenum. The ex-fighters have claimed that the party leadership misused over Rs10 billion. Despite pressure from the opposition parties and members of the Special Committee to take up the issue, the CIAA has apparently not taken the issue seriously, except for committing a probe.