Fake refugee scam: Court remands former Nepal deputy PM in three days judicial custody

Kathmandu [Nepal], May 15 : The Kathmandu District Court on Monday remanded former deputy prime minister and UML leader Top Bahadur Rayamajhi, arrested for being involved in a refugee scam, in a three-day judicial custody for further probe.

Rayamajhi who was on the run for eleven days was arrested from his relative's house in Budhanilkantha on the outskirts of Kathmandu on Sunday. He has been indicted in a fake Bhutanese refugee scam which has become one of the high-profile scandals of the Himalayan nation.

An arrested warrant was issued against Rayamajhi, the sitting Member of Parliament from the opposition CPN-UML (Communist Party of Nepal- Unified Marxist Leninist) for allegedly being involved in a racket of sending off people to the US in the guise of Bhutanese refugees.

Wearing Nepali Dhaka-Topi (Cap), a blue blazer, a white shirt and a pair of sky-blue jeans, Rayamajhi, escorted by Police officials, walked to the District Government Attorney's Office uncuffed waving at the media.

The sitting MP was then taken to Kathmandu District Court where after a brief hearing he was sent to the three days judicial custody for further investigation into the case.

Rayamajhi was arrested by police on the 12th day of the issuance of the arrest warrant against him while his son Sandeep, another alleged culprit in the scam was arrested on the same day of the issuance of the warrant.

Devraj Ghimire, Nepal's House of Representatives Speaker at the parliament meeting on Monday said, "Filed by Gajendra Budhathoki, plaintiff Government of Nepal, defendant Keshav Prasad Dulal, the case of fraud and organized crime which is being investigated the honourable member Top Bahadur Rayamajhi has been arrested on 05/14/2023 at around 8:25 PM (local time) from Kathmandu district- Budhanilkantha Metropolitan City, ward no four and has been kept in the custody of District Police Circle, Teku."

A total of 106 victims have registered complaints to the police noting that the fraudsters fleeced over Rs 232.5 million from them over different times. So far, police have arrested 13 people, including some high-profile individuals such as Nepal's former Minister for Home Affairs Bal Krishna Khand, former Minister for Home Affairs Ram Bahadur Thapa's security advisor Indra Jit Rai and former Home Secretary Tek Narayan Pandey among others, for their alleged involvement in the scam.

The case came to the limelight last month after the publication of an investigative piece through the grant of the Center for Investigative Journalism- Nepal. With mounting pressure, the incumbent Home Minister Narayan Kaji Shrestha directed police to carry out the investigation.

The scam slowly unravelled after the police apprehended Tek Narayan Pandey, the incumbent Secretary at Vice President's Office and former Home Secretary. Data and documents retrieved from the possession of Pandey busted the scam which is still under investigation.

The data and documents exposed how Nepalis were swindled out of millions of rupees in return for sending them to the United States as Bhutanese refugees. The case further came into the limelight when an arrest warrant was issued against the chief opposition CPN-UML Secretary Top Bahadur Rayamajhi, his son Sandeep and Prateek Thapa, the son of former Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa.

Out of them, Sandeep is in judicial custody for taking Nepali Rupees (NR) 10 million in bribes for assisting the racketeers to prepare the documents.

The Nepal Police also arrested Indra Jit Rai, adviser to the former home minister Ram Bahadur Thapa. Rai is also indicted in the case for helping the racketeers to obtain the fake document from the Home Ministry which worked as certification for them to send Nepali nationals as Bhutanese refugees to the US.

On June 14, 2022, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Nepal police launched an investigation into a criminal group involved in a fraud case. The group had allegedly been scamming people for years by promising to send them to the US as Bhutanese refugees.

The government action was in response to a case filed by the victims at the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority against the group a few months earlier. The case was brought to the Kathmandu Valley Crime Division only in June 2022 after which the investigation was launched.

The group has allegedly swindled over 875 people from different places in Nepal of millions of rupees. The police investigation found suspects collecting between one to five million Nepali rupees per head promising to send them to the US as Bhutanese refugees.

After 1990, Nepal saw a huge influx of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese nationals who were expelled from their country by the Bhutanese government in a massive ethnic cleansing drive.

The refugees were kept in several refugee camps in Morang and Jhapa districts. After a series of bilateral talks between Nepal and Bhutan failed, the international community led by the UN refugee agency started resettling the refugees in third countries, mostly in the US and Europe.

Between 2007 and 2016, the UNHCR helped resettle more than 113,500 Bhutanese refugees in eight countries in one of the largest resettlement programs globally.

Nepal's Home Ministry had formed a task force to find out the ways for remaining Bhutanese refugees who were denied resettlement. The investigative report by CIJ disclosed the infiltration in the report by government official Rai wherein he managed to manipulate the number of "left out" refugees for resettlement.