Kathmandu, July 20 The Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport today suspended seven officials of Transport Management Office, Mahakali including its acting chief Hemanta Bahadur Singh on charges of accepting registration of vehicles that had illegally crossed the Nepal border. The other suspended officials include Deepak Thapa, Narendra Raj Joshi, Tara Datta Bhatta, Mahadev Bhatta, Keshav Datta Badu and Shyam Raja Ojha. Roop Narayan Bhattarai, director general of the Department of Transport Management, said that a probe carried out by the department and the ministry showed that the Mahakali-based Transport Management Office was accepting fake certificates of vehicles imported from unofficial route and registering them. Moreover, the probe had found this regional office of DoTM to have accepted registration of nine illegally imported vehicles from India in the last few weeks. “Our initial probe showed that the Transport Management Office, Mahakali has been accepting registration of such illegal vehicles in mutual understanding with the unscrupulous traders,” Bhattarai said, adding that a number of government officials, including the aforementioned ones, in the Transport Management Office, Mahakali seem to have joined hands with local traders to promote unofficial import of vehicles. Meanwhile, Bhattarai informed that all the files related to this unlawful act have been forwarded to the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) today for further investigation. The illegal import of vehicles in Nepal is on the rise basically because the government has placed automobiles under the category of ‘luxurious products’ and imposes almost 250 per cent tax on its import. Consequently, vehicles in the domestic market cost more than twice their market rate in India. By importing vehicles from unofficial route and making it legal in cooperation with officials of Transport Management Offices, traders seek to evade such high tax rates on vehicles.