KATHMANDU, OCTOBER 11
The District Government Attorney's Office, Kathmandu, today formally charged four individuals, including Resham Mahara, 36, popularly known as Rahul, the son of former speaker and CPN-Maoist Centre Vice-chairman Krishna Bahadur Mahara, for their alleged involvement in 9-kg gold smuggling case.
The DGAO Kathmandu filed the case at Kathmandu District Court under three different offences, including Criminal breach of trust, customs evasion and organised crime. Besides Rahul, the other accused persons include Lokendra Kumar Paudel, 39, from Sarlahi currently residing in Sitapaila, Nagarjun Municipality-4, and Belgian nationalof Chinese origin Dawa Tsering, 39, and Nima Gurung, 57, from Bauddha, Kathmandu Metropolitan City-6.
Attorneys have also demanded principle amount of Rs 85.50 million from the accused as per the recommendation made by the Central Investigation Bureau of Nepal Police. Paudel has been accused of being an accomplice in the gold smuggling racket where he worked as a driver to Daojin Wang, the alleged Chinese mastermind behind the smuggling racket. Paudel also worked as mediator for the Chinese kingpin and various Nepali agents, and other people. Similarly, Tsering is currently behind bars for his involvement in the smuggling of 60 kilograms of gold in July that was also organised under similar modus operandi.
The chargesheet filed at the court reads that the customs office at Tribhuvan International Airport confiscated 730 e-cigarettes from a Chinese national named Li Hansong. The smuggler had arrived on a Fly Dubai flight on 25 December 2022 and claimed that the e-cigarettes were brought for business purposes. In response, Chief Customs Officer Mukti Prasad Shrestha ordered the confiscation of the e-cigarettes, permitting the Chinese national to retain only one for personal use. This action was taken on the basis of the understanding that goods brought for commercial purposes could not be cleared from the passengers' section.
However, it was later discovered, following a thorough investigation, that the e-cigarettes contained hidden gold. This realisation came after a customs office staff member observed that the smugglers had tampered with the e-cigarettes.
Two individuals, namely Rewant Khadka, a non-gazetted first-class official of TIA Customs Office, and customs agent Dinesh Basnet, were found to have collaborated to extract approximately 9 kilograms of gold from the e-cigarettes. They subsequently sold the gold for a sum of Rs 60 million.
Upon uncovering these actions, the CIB initiated an investigation and filed a case against five individuals involved in the incident.
The involvement of Mahara in the case was already there long before the gold was stolen from the customs office. Earlier, smugglers led by Dawa had approached the former House speaker and his son to exert pressure to release the cigarettes by using middlemen to smuggle the gold out of the customs office.
Police investigation has shown that the Mahara duo received or made calls over 250 times with gold smugglers, middlemen and government employees to release the e-cigarettes from the customs office.
Speaking at a public function, former House speaker Mahara acknowledged that he talked to government employees requesting them not to seize genuine imported goods paying due tax amount and was unaware of any such foul play. However, even after recording Mahara's statement, police decided not to prosecute him and didn't recommend to the attorney that action be taken against him.
A version of this article appears in the print on October 12, 2023, of The Himalayan Times
