Gold smuggling through TIA will continue as long as leaders are spared from an inquiry
The Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police, which investigated the 61-kilogram gold smuggling case in the last two months, submitted its report to the District Government Attorney's Office, Kathmandu, recommending prosecution of 29 people, including some Chinese and Indian nationals, involved in the gold smuggling case. The CIB has already arrested 32 people in connection with the scam, and six of those who were initially implicated in it were spared from the prosecution citing their involvement could not be proved. The police have also identified 18 others who are absconding. The CIB has demanded a principal amount of Rs 3.50 billion from the defendants, as they had also smuggled 302 kilos of gold in the same manner. The 61 kilos of gold were brought into the country from Hong Kong in collaboration with Chinese and Nepali nationals, who had concealed the metal inside motorbike brake shoes.
The racketeers had also formed seven different companies in others' names and had also set up plants to refine or melt the smuggled gold. The smuggled gold was to be re-smuggled into India using the porous border between the two countries. The police have also revealed that the accused Chinese nationals had also obtained Nepali citizenship and passports by bribing the officials in Kavre district.
The gold, initially said to be 100 kilos, was seized by the Department of Revenue Investigation (DRI) on July 20 from outside the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) after getting customs clearance. Police said the said gold amount was smuggled through the airport in connivance with the TIA officials, some of whom have also been recommended for prosecution. The defendants, according to police, will face seven Acts, including the Organised Crime Act, Nepal Citizenship Act and Immigration Act. They had created a multiple layer to smuggle gold from Hong Kong, Macau and Dubai, and the officials manning the TIA were found helping them to smuggle the precious yellow metal, mainly to supply in India.
However, just as in the Lalita Niwas land grab scam and fake Bhutanese refugee scandal, the CIB has not touched high-profile politicians and their family members, who had used their political clout to smuggle the gold. Former speaker and Maoist leader Krishna Bahadur Mahara, for example, was found to have held telephonic conversations with the TIA officials over another lot of 9 kilos of gold concealed in e-cigarettes which were seized by the TIA customs office.
But he has yet to face any legal prosecution. Police have already uncovered the truth that the arrested and absconding Chinese nationals had established close relations with the Maoist leaders and their sons to smuggle gold through the TIA on several occasions. Although the CIB has made some breakthrough in uncovering the truth behind the organised crime of smuggling gold, the Ministry of Home Affairs has not allowed it to go beyond what it has done so far. Everybody knows that it is not possible to smuggle such huge amounts of gold, that too, on several occasions, without a nexus between the high-profile politicians and the concerned officials at the customs point. Such illegal acts will continue unabated as long as the politicians are spared from the ongoing investigation.
Education Bill
The government on Wednesday registered the School Education Bill in Parliament after it was passed by the Council of Ministers with extensive amendments. The bill has incorporated all of the amendments sought by the private sector, including scrapping the provision for mandatory merger with the education guthi. Over the decades, school education in Nepal has become extremely expensive due to the poor education standard in the government schools, which forces the parents to send their wards to private schools. This has created a division in society, depending upon the type of school students attend.
School education cannot improve unless politics is banned in the public schools. It is a fact that the teachers are affiliated to one party or the other, which hampers the teaching-learning process. There are bizarre cases of teachers appointing teachers to replace them for a fraction of the salary they receive while engaging in other activities or business far from the school they are supposed to teach. Among others, the bill has tried to do away with politics in the schools. Its success will largely depend on the commitment of the parties to keep politics at bay.
A version of this article appears in the print on September 15, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
