KATHMANDU, Feb 3: On Saturday, a joint team of police officials from Kathmandu Valley Crime Investigation Office (KVCIO) and District Police Range (DPR), Lalitpur arrested 24 individuals, including 10 Indian nationals and 14 Nepali citizens, for operating an online betting business from two rented houses in Sanepa, Lalitpur. The group reportedly made a turnover of Rs 3.04 billion over the past six months through online betting via various apps.
Saturday’s arrest is not the first incident of its kind. Cross-border online crime has been on the rise lately.
Last week, a team of officials from KVCIO arrested two individuals from the valley for operating an online betting and gambling business. They were found to have facilitated over Rs 24 million in illegal transactions.
Merely a month ago, the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) busted an online scamming racket with international links for defrauding ‘hundreds of millions of rupees’ from gullible Nepali citizens, both in Nepal and abroad. They facilitated over Rs 3 billion in illegal online transactions.
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One commonality between the three cases in question is that the criminals were operating their businesses from rented real estate in Kathmandu valley. According to the KVCIO, the group arrested on Saturday had rented two houses, one for living and the other for carrying out the betting operation. In the earlier two cases, the criminals were arrested from rented rooms.
Another commonality is that all the arrests were possible due to tip-offs received by the police.
There are no specialized units focusing on crime such as the KVCIO in districts outside the capital. The rise in cases of cross-border online crime has left Nepal Police scratching their heads as the question still floats in the air: Do the police have the capacity to nab such criminals if they are operating from rented real estate in districts out of the valley?
Former Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police Hemant Malla informed Republica that a great many of such criminal groups are indeed evading police action currently.
According to him, insufficiency of investments in development of police’s manpower and technology and the unstructured nature of governmental systems might pose the biggest problem in the successful tracing and subsequent arrest of such criminals.
“Most of such arrests are based on external tip-offs, which highlights the need for investment in the development of Nepal Police’s manpower and technology,” former DIG Malla said, “The modus operandi of renting real estate properties to operate such criminal activities exposes the unstructured nature of tenant registration at government offices in Nepal.”
Superintendent of Police (SP) Kaji Kumar Acharya of the KVCIO opined that Saturday’s arrest highlights the leniency of Nepali laws as a major reason behind the growing popularity of Nepal as the operation center for online criminal groups.
“Firstly, our laws are comparatively lenient on online crimes; the criminals are kept in judicial custody for 7-10 days and they are released on bail,” SP Acharya told Republica, “Secondly, we have no system to register the tenants of real estate property in government’s records. Thirdly, skilled Nepali citizens tend to work for less money as compared to other nationals.”
Meanwhile, spokesperson for Nepal Police DIG Dinesh Kumar Acharya stated that police do have units outside the valley to deal with such cases. “Of course we have specialized units outside of the capital too,” he said, “While the KVCIO does make the work easier in the valley, we do maintain a level of monitoring over potential criminal groups outside of the valley too.”
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