Kathmandu, July 16:

A five-member probe panel of lawyers has given a clean chit to Chief Justice Dilip Kumar Paudel in an alleged sex scandal ‘exposed’ by Jana Aastha, a vernacular weekly.

The Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) had formed the panel under the coordination

of Prakash Wosti to examine the allegation.

Releasing a report prepared by the panel, Wosti said, “This is a false news based on a fabricated complaint forwarded to the Supreme Court from the central jail.”

“We want to call upon the media houses not to publish false news against the judiciary and its chief, as the court and the judges are the institutions of faith and trust.” The SCBA also asked the government to promulgate a contempt of court Act to protect the judiciary from scandals.

It called upon the Nepal Press Council, the Federation of Nepalese Journalists and the Supreme Court to set standards to regulate the dissemination of information concerning the judiciary. “For this purpose, the SCBA is ready to work with all organisations concerned,” SCBA president Prakash Raut said.

The government should take action against those who fabricated the so-called application of Tulsa Paudel alleging the CJ Paudel of raping her and publishing a report based on it, the SCBA said.

Wosti said that that investigation did not find Tulsa Paudel detained in the central jail in the last 10 years as claimed in the report. The panel report also stated that Tulsa is not the daughter of the CJ as claimed by the report.

However, pointing that the panel consisted of lawyers only, some advocates accused the SCBA of not maintaining neutrality while investigating the scandal.

Advocate Bimal Dhakal and Ramesh Badal said it is wrong to hold the media responsible for tarnishing the image of the judiciary as it has been exposing scandals in the judiciary. Based on these exposes, the judiciary can adopt a policy to clean itself, they said.