It is indeed shameful that people in high posts should stoop so low for money
At a time when the people have had enough of corruption and abuse of authority by those in power, the latest scam involving high-profile people who helped Nepalis acquire fake Bhutanese refugee status so that they could go to America has created quite a stir in the country. The scam surfaced after the victims lodged complaints at the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) in 2021 alleging they had been cheated of their money after failing to get fake refugee ID cards to go to America. According to the police, at least 145 people have also lodged complaints with the police that they had been swindled. In June last year, the Ministry of Home Affairs had directed the police to start an investigation into the criminal charges, which led to the arrest in March this year of the prime swindlers working as focal persons in providing Bhutanese refugee status to Nepali citizens. Their confessions have now roped in formers ministers as well as high-level government employees in the scam.
Among those high-profile people arrested include Indrajit Rai, security adviser to former home minister Ram Bahadur Thapa Badal, Tek Narayan Pandey, secretary at the Vice-President's Office and former home secretary, and Sandeep Rayamajhi, son of former deputy prime minister Top Bahadur Rayamajhi. Arrest warrants have also been issued against Top Bahadur, who is also the UML secretary, Badal's son Prateek and Rai's son Niraj for their links with the racket providing fake Bhutanese refugee certification to Nepali citizens to go to America. It is not known exactly how many people have been swindled, but it is estimated there could be about 875 victims. The exact figure will be known once the investigation is completed. The victims are said to have paid anywhere between a million and five million rupees to be enlisted as 'refugees who missed registration' or 'those interested in rehabilitation in a third country', which could amount to more than a billion rupees. More than a 100,000 Bhutanese of Nepali origin, or 18 per cent of Bhutan's population, fled that country beginning 1991 following persecution to live a life of refugees in Nepal. More than 113,000 refugees from Nepal have been resettled in eight countries, of whom more than 96,000 are resettled in the United States alone, after spending decades in the seven camps in Jhapa and Morang. Other Bhutanese refugees have gone to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. There are still about 6,300 Bhutanese refugees in Nepal, many of whom wish to return to their own homeland than be settled in a third country.
It is indeed shameful that people in high posts in the government and the parties should stoop so low for money. This is not the first time that officials have misused their power for personal gain. In the past, the misuse of red passports, or rather the sale of such passports by ministers to crooks, had raised much hue and cry in the country. While the scam has tarnished the image of the country, in the future, any document submitted by a Nepal is likely to undergo intense scrutiny by foreign governments to see if it is genuine.
Model for mediation
The Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration has now issued a model to operate the judicial committees headed by deputy-mayor or vice-chairperson of the urban and rural municipalities. The judicial committee is mandated to resolve minor disputes through mediation between the disputing parties. As per the model developed by the ministry, each ward of the local level is required to establish a mediation centre to resolve cases falling under the jurisdiction of the judicial committee.
The mediation centre will take the help of mediators chosen by the parties in dispute for each case in the presence of the local office bearers. The cases that cannot be settled by the mediation centre shall be referred to the judicial committee, which shall also forward them to the district court if it also fails to resolve amicably. The judicial committee has to settle the cases that fall under schedule-8 of the constitution. The federal government needs to launch refresher trainings to all the judicial committees to fairly impart justice. Most of the deputies in the rural and urban municipalities are women who lack legal understanding. Therefore, they should be trained in a manner that they also have some legal knowledge.
A version of this article appears in the print on May 5, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
