KATHMANDU, JULY 26

The Central Police Forensic Laboratory, which was asked to retrieve May 28 CCTV footage at the Ministry of Finance, today submitted its report to the special parliamentary probe committee investigating the alleged entry of unauthorised persons into the finance ministry a day before the budget was presented to influence the finance minister to tweak tax rates.

The parliamentary probe committee called technicians from the police lab to analyse the digital data recovered from the CCTV hard disk.

Probe panel member Khagaraj Adhikari, who represents the CPN-UML, said Nepal Police technicians produced the CCTV footage in parts which failed to clearly show who all entered or left the ministry.

Adhikari said 25 clips of CCTV footage that the Central Police Forensic Laboratory produced before the panel didn't establish anything clearly as they were of only a few seconds. 'Authorities told us that some footage got deleted while other clips overlapped,' Adhikari said. This raises more questions than it answers, he added.

Another panel member, Sarala Kumari Yadav, who represents the CPN (Unified Socialist), however, said all clips of the CCTV footage were clear and show that no unauthorised person gained access to the ministry on May 28.

Democratic Socialist Party-Nepal leader Laxman Lal Karna, who chaired the panel meeting, said they had analysed the data provided by Nepal Police and they would prepare their report tomorrow. 'We will write our findings in our report,' Karna said when asked what conclusion they drew from the retrieved data. The panel sought the Central Police Forensic Laboratory's help after the finance ministry said the CCTV footage in question got deleted as the storage could keep records of only 13 days.

Finance Minister Janardan Sharma resigned from his post after the main opposition CPN- UML created a ruckus in the Parliament accusing Sharma of allowing outsiders to tweak the budget on the night of May 28. The budget was presented in the House of Representatives on May 29. Sharma has denied any wrongdoing.

A version of this article appears in the print on July 27, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.