A journalist with the state news agency Rastriya Samachar Samiti (RSS) over two decades, Krishna Prasad Sigdyal has penned a book covering some of the things that he could not have written about in those days. [break]
As a reporter covering the courts of justice at a time in Nepal when the judiciary hardly ever figured in the news and RSS had no designated reporters on the legal beat, he took a particular interest in some of the much talked-about cases of the day, both as a student of law and out of a sense of their historical importance.
Thanks to his initiative, a fairly good picture of the cases in question can now be had from the old news bulletins preserved in RSS archives.
The author ran some personal risks in reporting the cases. The book can be looked upon as one of the rare spin-offs from RSS, which enjoys the status of a semi-official voice of the government.
In the book, Sigdyal has revisited four cases at some length. Implicated in the cases were people very much in the public eye. Also included in this work is an ample appendix of reports and write-ups by the author himself and by others concerning the judiciary, corruption and related matters that have appeared in the print media.
According to constitutional expert Purna Man Shakya, Sigdyal has done a sterling job of bringing out interesting aspects of the cases dealt with, aspects that you would not find in the relevant court files.
The cases revisited had political dimensions and raised legal issues, including those that Sigdyal was not able to bring up as a working journalist at the time.
These would be of interest to students of law and journalists today, and to those members of the general public who are old enough to remember how the cases unfolded in newspaper reports, such as they were, and in the rumor mills.
The carpet over-invoicing case (Karpet Kanda), which caused a lot of controversy during the heyday of the Panchayat era, gets pride of place in the book.
Those dragged into controversy over this scandal were 91 individuals, including such public figures as the late Dr Harka Gurung, the then governor of Nepal Rastra Bank Kul Shekhar Sharma, and former finance minister and diplomat Dr Bhesh Bahadur Thapa, not to mention Dr Tulsi Giri who was then prime minister.
Looked upon by some as the single most important case handled by the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority, which in turn was seen as an entity that operated contrary to the principles of natural justice, political analysts often regard the carpet over-invoicing scandal as the last straw that broke the camel’s back and put the Panchayat system firmly on the path of its demise.
Other prominent cases revisited concern a colorful former prime minister who was hauled up for contempt of court after accusing the chief justice of bribery, a food grains export scam in which a serving top bureaucrat was arrested, put behind bars and prosecuted in the first such incident in Nepal, and a showdown between a senior member of the bench and a top cop.
The author has done a detailed overview of the cases, bringing together the relevant documents, facts and train of events.
But the book is more than just a documentation of legal notoriety. It is also an attempt to put things in the context of our legal system, thereby throwing light on the development of that system and on its strengths and failings.
Going into a fairly detailed recounting of the pleadings for and against in the four cases, the author provides us an idea of judicial standards in this country. The treatment of the judiciary as a whole is matter of fact, which gives it a negative feel.
But it was apparently not meant to be negative. Right at the outset, Sigdyal observes that while Nepal may have lagged behind in the development of the executive and legislative branches of government, it has been near the vanguard when it comes to the development of the judiciary.
He points out that documentation and codification have been salient features of Nepal’s legal system right from its beginnings.
The first part of the book goes into discussions of law and justice, Supreme Court activism, the legal profession and the judicial administration, to facilitate a better understanding and appreciation of the cases themselves.
The reader will find in these pages short but interesting portraits of the legal luminaries of the day, including the Supreme Court justices. The author knew most of the chief justices from the Panchayat era onwards, either personally or in occupational capacity.
He had gone out of his way to familiarize himself with them. His observations about them would constitute useful materials for practitioners and students of law in Nepal.
The author rounds out his book with a list of key office bearers of the bench and bar, past and present. An index of names and places completes the tome.
Also to be found herein are some descriptions of how the royal palace, the center of all powers during the Panchayat, went about exercising its influence on the handling of the four cases, and of how the judges, too, came under its sway.
It would be relevant to cite at this point a brief speech by the then attorney general, in which he pointedly said, among other things, that “corruption comes from above.”
On a more contemporary note, the author weighs in against the malaise of corruption which is still rife in our public life.
Though not directly connected with the main thrust of the book, this is an earnest attempt to help clean out the Augean stables, as it were. And so he goes into some detail about the prosecution of corruption cases against some former government ministers and former police chiefs in assorted scams whose trails have gone cold under political pressure or through statute of limitations.
As a concerned citizen, Krishna Prasad Sigdyal speaks of the long road that lies ahead if we are to preserve intact the integrity of this country that has been handed down to us by our forebears. This calls for, among other things, the fashioning of laws that cannot be bent to anyone’s will.
He makes the sober observation that in the Third World countries, formulation of law is deliberately obstructed because the existence of laws means one cannot do as one pleases.
The author wishes this book, the latest from his pen, to be looked upon as a novel exercise in the literature of law in Nepal.
It is certainly that, inspired as it is in part by a wish to see the decisions of the Supreme Court and the appellate courts brought before the lay public in simple, layman’s language.
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