With this, the number of the Constituent Assembly (CA) members likely lose their CA membership over their role in the high-profile scam has totaled four. [break]
Gayatri Shah of Nepali Janata Dal and BP Yadav of MPRF have already been suspended from the CA and are now facing the trial. They were released on a bail amount of Rs 1.5 million each last week.
Meanwhile, more lawmakers are likely to get implicated in the scam as DIG Rajendra Singh Bhandari, the chief of CIB, referring to the progress made in the investigations said, "I do not believe that Rana and Raya will be the last lawmakers to be hauled up," said.
CIB claims to have established the fact that that two persons, Nirmal Baniya and Kedar Paudel, of Myagdi, paid Rs 1 million each to the racket to use tampered red passports belonging to Rana and Raya to fly to Australia by an Etihad Airways flight (Ey 291) on December 11, 2010.
Rana has been remanded for a week by Kathmandu District Court for investigations as per the Passport Act.
Meanwhile, Raya, who has been absconding ever since police asked him to furnish his red passport, would be arraigned together with Rana under the same case, officials said.
Rana´s role in the red passport misuse was proved last night after police nabbed one Devendra Paudel, allegedly a member of the racket, who is skilled at changing the photographs in the passports. Rana´s tampered passport (01244) was found in Paudel´s possession. This was the new passport Rana had taken from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) after his erstwhile passport (019917) expired in 2010.
CIB verified the tampered passport as belonging to Rana after getting it examined by the Nepal Police Forensic Lab which said that the signatures and fingerprints on both the old and new passports were same.
"Rana had tried to prove his innocence by showing the old passport when Police approached him in this regard a couple of months back," said officials.
Police had arrested Rana, 41, a CA member elected under the proportional quota from Kailali district, from his Anamnagar home Monday morning.
Raya, on the other hand, hasn´t even contacted the parliament secretariat after his name surfaced in the scam.
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