KATHMANDU, SEPTEMBER 26

The Supreme Court issued a show cause notice to the government seeking reply within 15 days why it did not institute a case against former prime ministers Baburam Bhattarai and Madhav Kumar Nepal, and former chief secretary Lilamani Paudel in the Lalita Niwas land grab case.

A single bench of Justice Binod Sharma issued the show cause on Sunday in response to a writ petition filed by Senior Advocate Bal Krishna Neupane against the government.

The court also ordered its administration to club two other cases related to land grab cases, including a habeas corpus writ filed by Yograj Paudel.

On August 7, another writ petition - 076-WO-0788 - was filed by Neupane against the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority and others wherein the petitioner had sought indictment of Bhattarai and Nepal in the Lalita Niwas land grab case.

In August the Supreme Court, in response to Yograj Paudel's case, had directed investigating agencies probing forgery and organised crime charges in Lalita Niwas land grab case to immediately bring Cabinet decision makers or people on the top of the pyramid that decided to transfer government land plots to private ownership within the scope of their investigation. A Division bench of Justices Anil Kumar Sinha and Kumar Chudal had issued the order in response to a habeas corpus writ petition filed on behalf of Yograj Paudel against the home ministry and others.

The bench expressed dissatisfaction with the Lalita Niwas land grab case investigation, saying it was mainly focused on lower rank government employees who only performed the assigned tasks and those who had invested money to buy land.

The court ordered investigating agencies to probe all the higher ups, including those involved in the Cabinet decisions taken on 11 April 2010, 14 May 2010, 13 August 2010, and 4 October 2012 and those that certified the decisions and executed them, and those that prepared the notings on behalf of the concerned ministry about the transfer of Lalita Niwas land.

The court observed there were allegations that Lalita Niwas land plots were fraudulently transferred to individuals on the basis of the Cabinet decisions of 11 April 2010, 14 May 2010, 13 August 2010 and 4 October 2012.

The CIB is investigating the role of office bearers, different ministries, government employees and some private individuals.

Some cabinet decisions related to some land of Lalita Niwas were taken by the Cabinet led by former PMs Nepal and Bhattarai. Both have maintained innocence in the Lalita Niwas land grab case.

The police have accused some of the defendants in Lalita Niwas land grab case of creating fake government documents to transfer ownership of government land of Lalita Niwas to private ownership.

The CIAA had, on 6 February 2020, filed corruption case against 175 individuals including four former ministers, former head of the CIAA Deep Basnyat, and two former secretaries.

A version of this article appears in the print on September 27, 2023, of The Himalayan Times