Kathmandu, March 21:

Years’ effort of a man and his team helped Nepal Police nab a French criminal who was sexually abusing Nepali children for more than a decade.

Krishna Thapa, the director of Voice of Children (VoC), who helped the police nab French child molester Jean Jacques Maurice Haye, appreciated the Nepal Police but accused the Interpol of not taking timely initiation to track down Haye, who was living incognito here for the last five years.

“Tracking down a notorious paedophile was not an easy task. It became difficult because the paedophile was supported by the French community in Nepal as well as influential local leaders,” Thapa said.

Thapa, who knew Haye for long, was trying to track him as soon as one of Thapa’s friends saw him at Ason in 2007.

“After we found that Haye used to live near the Association for the Children of Chhauni (ACC), a children’s home established by Haye, we informed DSP Meera Chaudhary,” he said. Chaudhary was posted at the Women’s Cell in Kalimati and was aware of Haye’s case.

“Had there been no Meera Chaudhary, Haye would not have been arrested even by now,” Thapa said. Thapa claimed Haye used to draw money from a bank near the Metropolitan Police Circle, Boudha, and the French embassy had informed Interpol about his arrival here repeatedly on VoC’s request.

In 2005, 28 children were rescued from the ACC after the children complained of sexual abuse. The victimised children had identified the names of 22 paedophiles including Haye. He was arrested in 1998 as well. Two cases were filed against him. He was later released on bail in one case while the case filed by Sharad Sharma, the then president of NGO Federation of Nepal, was dismissed in 2002 as Sharma failed to present himself before the court on a given date. Thapa, along with six victims of Haye, had even reached France to file a case against him in a French court.

VoC had also launched a search for him in Pokhara after coming to know that he had married a woman of Pokhara in 2000. “When police nabbed Haye, there were six children at ACC of Gokarna,” he claimed. “Haye had been indirectly contributing to run ACC,” he said.

Thapa claimed that Haye would have been arrested as soon as he arrived here if Interpol had taken serious initiation to nab him.