In what could be described as the ugly remnant of feudalism, a loan shark in Sarlahi district has given physical and mental tortures to as many as 300 people, including many women, who are now in Kathmandu seeking justice against the money lender. The victims have accused him of producing fake documents to inflate multiple times the actual amount of loan they had taken. Three hundred victims of loan shark of Sarlahi district are in Kathmandu to draw the attention of the government authorities to the extreme injustice they have been subjected to. They had taken loan from Shyam Krishna Kalawar Sah, a local loan shark, who has been terrorizing them by preparing false documents. According to the victims, Sah has inflated their loan amount to as much as three to nine million rupees from around Rs 50,000 to Rs 100,000 that they had actually borrowed. It is learnt that Sah had given a total loan of about Rs 10 million to 300 households of the district, has already collected Rs. 10.2 million from the borrowers in interest and yet he has been claiming Rs 90 million as lending interest from the locals. Sah has been so cruel in his dealing with the borrowers that three of the victims have already committed suicide and women victims also accuse Sah of sexually abusing them.
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This is the height of injustice inflicted on poor people. And the pattern in which this predatory system—predatory because the intention here does not seem to help out the poor with money when they need it but to increase the interest so exorbitantly that the loan takers either have to accept bondage or commit suicide—is very disturbing and is reminiscent of era of feudalism. That this should happen at a time when various government and non-government agencies, including donors, are pouring in a lot of money to ensure people’s access to finance shows how the country is failing its poor. This raises the question of why efforts to financially empower the poor are failing. Is this because the concerned agencies have not been able to understand the reality on the ground? Or that all those efforts are for mere show off? The case of Sarlahi is one among many other reported cases. As a matter of fact, predatory lending is rampant in many of villages, especially in Nepal’s Tarai plains. The much touted scheme of banks and financial institutions reaching out to rural villages has not benefitted people on the ground. And wherever they have reached, they have not been able to address financial needs of the rural poor.
In 2016, journalist Ekal Silwal had brought out similar stories of loan sharks from Mahottari district. It was found that the money lender had inflated the loaned amount by several thousand rupees by adding exorbitantly high interest rates. Victims were dragged into the courts for failing to pay back the loan and the court had given verdict in favor of the money lender. At the moment the victims from Sarlahi district have appealed the ruling Nepal Communist Party leaders to help them come out of this situation. The government should seriously look into these cases. First of all, the loan sharks need to be punished. While long-term measures may be required to eradicate this practice, the major need today is to alleviate the sufferings of the victims. Sah has not only made living terribly difficult for the victims, his predatory practice has become the cause of deaths of three victims. This is a serious case and demands serious government response.
