NEPALGUNJ, Aug 20: It has come to light that 84 bigha (56.89 hectares) of land belonging to Bageshwari Temple of Nepalgunj, which is a famous and sacred Hindu temple, has been transferred to the names of individuals.
Land of the temple located at Indrapur, has been transferred to the names of 300 people and they have already obtained land ownership certificates.
An area of 2.38 bigha is found to have been transferred to the name of one Gokarna Kurmi. Abdul Hasib Siddiqi has managed to transfer 15.6 kattha to his name. Like Kurmi and Siddiqi many others are also found to have transferred the temple land to their names and some of them have already sold the property.
700 bigha of temple land shrinks to 8 kattha
According to Gopal Prasad Adhikari, secrtary of Bageshwari Temple Guthi Management Committee, records at the Land Revenue Office showed that those who had been cultivating the land were found to have transferred the ownership to their own names.
“The investigation into when and how this all happened is underway,” said Adhikari. “The temple’s land has been transferred but we are investigating under which law they managed to do this.” He, however, declined to divulge the details saying the case is still under investigation. He said the investigation was taking time because they had to undergo a lengthy bureaucratic process to obtain the documents from the government offices. “It took 18 months first to ascertain the exact area of the temple,” he said.
He said they have planned to finish the investigation process in the next 15 days and make public the details about the land and other property of the temple.
A committee to investigate the temple’s property has been formed with Deputy Mayor of Nepalgunj Sub-Metropolitan City Uma Thapamagar as head.
“The details of the land have already been collected. We will make public the real status of the temple’s land soon,” said Thapa.
Chief of the Land Revenue Office Banke district Prem Bahadur Dautyal said that it has been confirmed that the temple’s land has been transferred to individuals’ names. “Now we will find out, when and how this was done,” he added.
