A court in Kathmandu has sentenced two former Nepalese ministers and 14 others to prison after convicting them in a case related to creating forged documents. The documents were reportedly used to help Nepalese citizens secure resettlement in the United States by falsely presenting them as Bhutanese refugees, according to court records and attorneys.According to Reuters, former Deputy Prime Minister and Energy Minister Top Bahadur Rayamaji was sentenced to four years in prison after being found guilty on charges including fraud, crimes against the state and involvement in organized crime. A court document showed that former Home Minister Bal Krishna Khand received a two-year prison sentence for his role as an accomplice.The Kathmandu District Court issued the rulings late on Tuesday.
Rayamaji is currently in custody, while Khand remains out on bail. The two former ministers denied any involvement in the case.Rayamaji’s lawyer Dharma Raj Regmi said his client was not involved in decisions related to refugee policy and would appeal the ruling. “He was never involved in refugee policy making,” Regmi said, adding that an appeal would be filed.Khand’s lawyer, Pankaj Karna, also confirmed that he will file an appeal against the ruling.
The court also convicted 14 other defendants, including a former senior official in the Nepalese Home Ministry and a former leader representing Bhutanese refugees. They were sentenced to prison terms of up to four years, according to the court document.The investigation into the alleged fraud began in 2023, when authorities uncovered allegations that Nepalese citizens were falsely presented as Bhutanese refugees to access a US-led third-country resettlement program.
It has not been confirmed whether any individual obtained resettlement in the United States through the alleged scheme.The issue is linked to the decades-long Bhutanese refugee crisis, during which about 1,20,000 people of Nepali origin have left Bhutan for Nepal since the early 1990s after disputes over nationality, identity and political rights.Under the resettlement initiative launched after Nepal and Bhutan failed to resolve the issue through repatriation talks, nearly 113,000 Bhutanese refugees have been transferred to countries including the United States, Canada and Australia. Washington accepted about 100,000 refugees from Nepal, while several thousand remain in camps in eastern Nepal.The court ruling comes amid renewed focus on corruption in Nepal in the wake of youth-led protests last year that brought down the previous government.