Refugee racket in Nepal: Official held, warrant against ex-minister

Police said the arrest warrant has been issued against former minister Top Bahadur Rayamajhi and his son Sandeep, and Prateek Thapa, son of former Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thpa.

Both Ram Bahadur Thapa and Rayamajhi were senior Maoist leaders who later crossed over to the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) led by K P Oli.

Preliminary investigation by police revealed that some top bureaucrats and their family members collected money from around 800 people, promising to send them abroad, preferably the United States, as ‘Bhutani refugees’.

Arrest of three suspects – one of them an aide to Nepali Congress leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Sujata Koirala six weeks ago – provided substantial clues to the police on the involvement of top officials, sources said.

Indrajit Rai, a former Maoist parliamentarian and officer on special duty to Minister Badal, was arrested three days ago and he is believed to have implicated others including Prem Rai, another former Home secretary and currently the chief of anti-graft constitutional body — Commission of Inquiry into Abuse of Authority (CIAA).

Prem Rai called on Nepal President Ram Chandra Poudel and Vice-President Ram Sahaya Prasad Yadav on Wednesday, claiming “innocence” in the racket , although he is believed to be one of the 81 people named as the beneficiary in the racket.

Nepal has been home to over 100,000 Bhutani refugees since late 1980s, and with Bhutan government refusing to take them back, US and half a dozen other countries took about 90,000 of them for resettlement in their countries.