CPN-UML House of Representatives (HoR) member Top Bahadur Rayamajhi will be suspended as lawmaker after being arrested in connection with the fake Bhutanese refugees scam.
HoR speaker will have to suspend any lawmaker once the police inform about his/her arrest. “The House must be informed once any lawmaker is arrested. The process of suspension will start only after that,” former HoR secretary Gopal Yogi told Setopati. “There is provision of the speaker informing the meeting when the House session is on while a notice is published if there is no session.”
Federal Parliament Spokesperson Ekram Giri said that the secretariat had yet to be informed about arrest of Rayamajhi who was elected to the HoR from Arghakhanchi.
Rayamajhi was arrested from Budhanilkantha Municipality in Kathmandu on Sunday. According to a highly-placed police source, Rayamajhi was arrested from Narayan Paudel’s house in Pasikot, Budhanilkantha. Paudel is a friend of Rayamajhi’s. The two have been neighbors since their early days in Arghakhanchi and had also joined the Maoist movement together, the source said.
Rayamajhi was arrested by a special team from the Nepal Police Headquarters.
Rayamajhi had been absconding after the Kathmandu District Court issued an arrest warrant for him and his son Sandeep on May 3 over their alleged involvement in the scam. Sandeep was arrested from Butwal the same day. Other people arrested in the case had implicated the two in their statements to the police.
Rayamajhi was attending an event in Arghakhanchi when the arrest warrant was issued for him.
He had said that he would return to Kathmandu and help the police with their investigation. He had also said that he would contact the police and present himself in person at the District Police Range, Kathmandu, but he had been on the run since then.
The District Police Range, Kathmandu, had issued a circular across the country for his arrest.
A team of Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) had also been deployed to search for him as police suspected he may have fled to Lucknow, India.
UML suspended Rayamajhi as party secretary on May 10, a week after the arrest warrant was issued for him.
Police had earlier arrested 12 people in connection with the scam that swindled tens of millions from Nepalis with the promise of sending them to America as Bhutanese refugees.
Those arrested are Rayamajhi's son Sandeep, Keshav Dulal, Sanu Bhandari, Tek Narayan Pandey, Indrajit Rai, Sandesh Sharma, Sagar Rai, Tanka Kumar Gurung, Ram Sharan KC, Govinda Chaudhary, Nepali Congress leader and former home minister Bal Krishna Khand, and Khand's personal secretary Narendra KC.
Ram Sharan KC and Govinda Chaudhary were arrested on Tuesday while Khand and his personal secretary were arrested from Khand's residence in Kathmandu on Wednesday morning.
Meanwhile, former home minister Ram Bahadur Thapa's son Prateek and Indrajit Rai's son Niraj are still on the run.
