Timeline

Dec 3     Police raid the warehouse of Swastik Oil Industries and impound five trucks laden with edible oil; detain two employees

Dec 4     Police claim to be on the lookout for Kishan Lal Dugar, chairman of KL Dugar Group, and his son Naresh Dugar, vice chairman of the Group, who are at large

Dec 6     The detained employees remanded for five more days for interrogation

Dec 8     Police say they have been gathering ‘undisputable evidence’ and will begin questioning the detained employees from Wednesday

Kathmandu, December 8

Any optimism related to the guilty being brought to the books with action being initiated against KL Dugar Group for engaging in rampant black-marketing is fading fast as the police are yet to even begin interrogating the two employees of the company who were detained on December 3.

The police had arrested Aman Jauthan, manager, and Liaison Officer Pramod Raj Adhikari from the warehouse of Swastik Oil Industries and impounded five trucks laden with edible oil that the company was planning to sell at a higher rate than the existing market price.

Swastik Oil Industries is one of the flagship businesses of prominent business house, KL Dugar Group, which produces soybean, hydrogenated vegetable, sunflower and palmolein oil under the brand names of Swastik, Dhara and Bigul.

Superintendent of Police at Metropolitan Police Range Kathmandu Bishwo Raj Pokharel informed that they plan to begin their interrogation from Wednesday. The remand period is expiring on Friday, which means that the police have to present the accused before court by then for prosecution.

According to Pokharel, they are looking into the case as per the available documents and the interrogation will begin from tomorrow based on the evidence of the documents.

“Earlier we planned to interrogate the accused from today, but since we have been busy gathering evidence based on the documents, we will start our line of questioning from tomorrow.”

According to Pokharel, police have been preparing to file their case in the court charging the company of engaging in black-marketing and has been gathering ‘indisputable evidences’.

It has to be noted, however, that the Metropolitan Police Range Kathmandu had raided the warehouse of Swastik and its manager and liaison officer were rounded up with five trucks of edible oil and immediately remanded for three days last Thursday.

Police on Sunday again remanded them for five days for interrogation, following the expiry of the previous remand period from the Kathmandu District Court.

Swastik Oil Industries had started raising the price of edible oil all of a sudden since the last one-and-a-half months, when the market began witnessing shortage of edible oil due to disruptions in supply of daily essentials from India because of the Tarai unrest.

Police have said that the company was preparing to dispatch the trucks laden with edible oil carrying price tag of Rs 320 per litre — double the price during normal times — to the market.