The Kathmandu District Court has ordered eight defendants to repay Rs 153.797 million to 59 people cheated by a fake Bhutanese refugee racket, according to reports of the full judgment published on 12 October.But 53 of the 112 people who complained to police will receive nothing.
The ruling matters now because it shows who will get money back and why some victims will not. Victims handed over large sums in the hope of reaching the United States. Whether any of that money returns now depends on the court’s findings.
What the court ordered
The bench of Judge Tej Bahadur Khadka ordered the repayments as an extra obligation on top of prison terms. On 14 July, the court had imposed jail terms and fines. Former deputy prime minister Top Bahadur Rayamajhi and other principal defendants received four years in prison and a Rs 40,000 fine.
Sandesh Sharma of Dang carries the largest bill. The court told him to return Rs 74.7 million to 38 people, most of them young residents of Dang.
Sanu Bhandari must repay Rs 26 million and Keshav Prasad Dulal Rs 15.8 million. Bhandari and Dulal are the alleged masterminds.
Rayamajhi, a CPN-UML leader, must repay Rs 4 million. Indrajit Rai, a security adviser to then home minister Ram Bahadur Thapa, must repay Rs 15 million. Sagar Rai must pay Rs 12.9 million, Angtawa Sherpa Rs 2.7 million and Govinda Kumar Chaudhary Rs 2.5 million.
Who gets money back, and who does not?
One complainant, Tejina Lamsal of Tulsipur in Dang, paid an advance of Rs 500,000 on 5 February 2021, according to her police complaint. She later paid Rs 1 million and Rs 2.5 million in 2022, and another Rs 500,000 in December. She had claimed losses of Rs 4.5 million. She did not testify in court, so the court recognised only Rs 2 million.
Police complaints named 112 people as victims.
The court rejected 53 of those claims. Forty-three of the 53 had neither given a statement describing what happened nor appeared to testify.
One complaint, filed by Budhathoki, covered 61 people including himself. The court found recoverable losses for only 23 of them.
The judgment also shows that some people who collected money for others were themselves deceived.
Ram Sharan KC of Tokha collected money from 34 people and paid it into Sanu Bhandari’s accounts. He also gave Dulal Rs 15 million in cash. The court acquitted him, finding that Dulal and Bhandari had cheated him too, and moved the repayment duty to them.
Three named defendants face no repayment order but were still convicted.
The court sentenced former home minister Bal Krishna Khand to two years in prison and a Rs 20,000 fine as an accomplice in fraud, offences against the state and organised crime.
Former home secretary Tek Narayan Pandey received four years and a Rs 40,000 fine for the same three offences.
Bhutanese refugee leader Teknath Rizal was convicted of forgery and as an accomplice in the other three offences, and received two years and a Rs 20,000 fine.
The court also left a central question open. It found that an official report had been forged but said the evidence did not show who was involved.
Only Dulal, Bhandari and Rizal were convicted of forgery. Rayamajhi, Khand, Pandey, Indrajit Rai and other officials were acquitted of that charge.
The court said prosecutors had not shown when, where or how Pandey took the report out of the ministry. A forensic check of Khand’s mobile phone found no direct link to the forgery, according to the judgment.
How the fraud worked
Nepal’s resettlement programme for Bhutanese refugees began in 2007 and moved more than 100,000 people to eight countries, including the United States, according to reports.
After the World Food Programme stopped its assistance in January 2019, about 6,500 refugees remained in camps in Jhapa and Morang.
The Cabinet asked the Home Ministry to prepare a policy for their future. On 13 June 2019, then home minister Ram Bahadur Thapa formed a three-member task force led by joint secretary Bal Krishna Panthi.
It submitted its report on 18 October 2019. The task force recommended registering only 429 people, whose cases a joint team of UNHCR and the refugee coordination unit had examined.
It found no evidence that 581 families who said they had missed registration were genuine refugees.
According to reports, the racket then altered that report. Two extra schedules, 9(a) and 9(b), were inserted into a forged version. They made 875 people from those 581 families appear eligible. Victims filled in forms under fictitious names and received false identities. Panthi told the court his original report had nine annexes, while the forged copy had ten.
What comes next
Police filed cases against 31 people on 13 August 2024, seeking to recover about Rs 290 million. Seven were acquitted, including Sandeep Rayamajhi. Eight other accused remain at large, and their cases are on hold until they are arrested. Because this is a district court ruling, an appeal to the High Court remains possible.
