KATHMANDU, April 26: The Supreme Court has upheld the decision to keep former Deputy Prime Minister and UML leader Top Bahadur Rayamajhi, along with the then Home Secretary Teknarayan Pandey and seven others, in pre-trial detention in connection with the fake Bhutanese refugee case.
A joint bench comprising Justices Kumar Regmi and Tek Prasad Dhungana declined to release them from remand on Thursday. After successive appeals through the district and high courts, only seven individuals remain in pre-trial detention in this high-profile case.
The joint bench upheld the previous rulings of the Kathmandu District Court and Patan High Court. Of those who appealed to the Supreme Court, seven have been ordered to remain in custody, while three have been granted bail. The case is still pending.
Shamsher Mia has been granted bail on a bond of Rs 1,000,000, Govinda Kumar Chaudhary on Rs. 1,000,000, and former Speaker Angtawa Sherpa on a bail amount of Rs. 3,000,000.
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According to the orders of the District and High Courts, those in pre-trial detention had requested permission to contest their case outside of prison. Only three individuals were granted this privilege as requested.
However, Rayamajhi, Pandey, Indrajit Rai, Keshab Prasad Dulal, Sanu Bhandari, Sagar Rai, and Sandesh Sharma will remain in custody pending further investigation, as they face allegations of fraud.
In the case of these seven people, the SC has ruled that there are false accusations, with conflicting statements against each other, and based on the documents of the victims, their detention should continue for preliminary investigation. Now these seven people will have to stay in pre-trial detention until the final hearing on the case is issued.
The 10 individuals who were made fake Bhutanese refugees in pretext of sending them to the US filed a writ petition in the SC claiming that they were held captive illegally. Following the case's connection to high-profile individuals, the Patan High Court ordered the detention of nine people, including former Deputy Prime Minister Rayamajhi.
The Patan High Court ordered that six of the 20 accused in the case be released on bail and four on one’s own recognizance. The Patan High Court ordered Nepali Congress leader and former Home Minister Balkrishna Khand to be released from prison on a bond of Rs 3 million. According to that order, Khand has been released from prison after paying the bail amount.
Rayamajhi, Pandey and others demanded to be released from prison saying that they were detained unlawfully. They filed a writ petition against the Office of the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Patan High Court, the Kathmandu District Court, the Attorney General's Office, the Police Headquarters and others, claiming that they were illegally detained. The Supreme Court had earlier issued a show cause order on this issue.
On June 16, 2023, the Kathmandu District Court ordered 15 individuals to be kept in pre-trial detention in the Bhutanese refugee case. Upholding the district court's order, the Patan High Court also ordered the former minister and others to be remanded in custody.
The joint bench of Judges Janak Pandey and Prakash Kharel had on December 1 ordered that the order of the Kathmandu District Court should be partly annulled and partly upheld in the case of fraud, forgery, against the state and organized crime. There are 20 defendants in this case. In the case of nine of them, the Patan High Court upheld the order of the Kathmandu District Court.
In the fake Bhutanese refugee case, a case was registered for fraud, forgery, crime against the state and organized crime. In a case registered in the Kathmandu District Court on June 3, 2023, a demand equal to Rs 2.8 million has been made. Prateek Thapa and Niraj Rai are on the absconding list.
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