• BALUWATAR LAND GRAB SCAM
KATHMANDU, AUGUST 27
The Kathmandu District Government Attorney's Office today filed a case against 289 individuals, including a former deputy prime minister, four former ministers, six former secretaries, an incumbent secretary, and a joint-secretary along with dozens of government employees, middle-men, land mafia and businessmen in connection with the Baluwatar land grab scam.
Information Officer of Kathmandu District Court Deepak Dahal confirmed that a case of forgery had been filed against 289 people.
The case filed at the court shows that apart from the 289 defendants, an additional 21 individuals who are now deceased have also been indicted in the case. The defendants are accused of falsifying government documents to transfer 143 ropanis of government-owned land of Lalita Niwas into private ownership in a time span of around 30 years.
Earlier, police had arrested many of them under anti-forgery and organised crime laws and recommended the government attorney to label charges against the defendants under the same charges. But in the final hour, the government attorney office decided to drop organised crime charges against the defendants.
Those facing the charges are former deputy prime minister Bijay Kumar Gachhadar, former ministers Chandra Dev Joshi, Dambar Bahadur Shrestha, Chhabi Raj Panta and former state minister Sanjay Sah. Sah, convicted of murder charges, remains in jail.
Similarly, the incumbent Communication and Information Secretary, Krishna Bahadur Raut, and joint-secretary at the Home Ministry Sushil Vaidya have also been charged in the case.
An investigation of the Central Investigation Bureau showed that the four Cabinet decisions made on the proposal of the ministers from April 2010 to October 2012 paved the way for the transfer of government land into private partnership. However, the Nepal Police named former prime ministers Madhav Kumar Nepal and Baburam Bhattarai, whose Cabinet had made the decision on the Lalita Niwas land, only as witnesses in their report. The CIB had recorded the statements of Nepal and Bhattarai after it was rebuked by the Supreme Court for leaving out the higher level of the pyramid.
The Kathmandu Government Attorney Office has presented the written statement of former PMs Nepal and Bhattarai as evidence and witness to the crime.
It is noteworthy that the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority had earlier decided against filing corruption charges against the former prime ministers, citing that it was out of their jurisdiction to challenge a Cabinet decision.
A government-formed investigative committee chaired by former secretary Sharada Prasad Trital, in December 2018, observed in its report that Lalita Niwas was under the government's rightful ownership.
The committee concluded that a series of Cabinet decisions spanning multiple prime ministers had contributed to the unauthorised transfer of Lalita Niwas land into private ownership.
The Lalita Niwas area was at first owned by the Rana regime and early stage of the Panchayat era. After the 1961 coup by the then king Mahendra Shah, the government confiscated 14 ropanis of land belonging to Nepali Congress leader Subarna Shumsher Rana. Subsequently, the government obtained 285 ropanis of Subarna Shumsher Rana's Baluwatar land by compensating the owners.
Of this land, 172 ropanis now host significant structures, including the official residences of the PM, chief justice, speaker and the central office of Nepal Rastra Bank.
Detectives have alleged that 113 ropani land of Lalita Niwas was transferred to private ownerships in four different stages through collusion with the Land Revenue Office staff, land mafia, political leaders and businessmen.
A version of this article appears in the print on August 28, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
