KATHMANDU, Nov 16: The Special Court on Tuesday acquitted suspended lawmaker of the CPN (Maoist Center) Lharkyal Lama of illegally amassing huge amount of property.
The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority had filed a case against Lama at the Special Court on May 12, 2016, accusing him of amassing huge amount of property through illegal means. The CIAA had claimed that Lama's expenditures exceeded his income and its investigations had found that he had amassed property illegally. The CIAA had investigated into Lama's total property amounting to Rs 290 million and said that it could not identify the source for the property worth Rs 90 million.
A three-member bench of the Special Court comprising Mohan Raman Bhattarai and members Prabha Basnet and Mahesh Prasad Pudasaini had acquitted Lama of the charge.
Lama was appointed Constituent Assembly (CA) member under the proportional representation (PR) seat in February last year by the UCPN (Maoist) amidst serious dissatisfaction within the party.
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In April 2011 when Jhalanath Khanal was the prime minister, Lama was forced to resign from the post of minister of state for finance within a few months of his appointment, after being charged with holding multiple foreign passports and citizenship certificates.
Lama has been accused in the past of possessing an Indian passport under the name of Khempo Tshering, a Tibetan refugee identity card under the name of Lama Chhime Tshering, and citizenship certificates from various districts in Nepal. He was a member of the first Constituent Assembly from the CPN-UML.
