The Patan High Court has endorsed the Kathmandu District Court’s order to send Rahul Mahara to judicial custody in the 9 kg gold smuggling case.
A bench of Judges Anju Upreti Dhakal and Dipendra Adhikari upheld the district court’s decision by issuing an order to keep Rahul and another accused Lokendra Kumar Paudel in custody, said the high court’s deputy registrar Tirtha Raj Bhattarai.
Rahul is the son of former speaker and CPN (Maoist Center) Vice-chairman Krishna Bahadur Mahara.
On October 13, 2023, the Kathmandu District Court had ordered Rahul to be sent to judicial custody and released Paudel on a bail of Rs 500,000.
The Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police had filed a case against four individuals – Rahul, Paudel, Belgian national Dawa Tsering and Nima Gurung – on October 11, 2023, charging them with criminal breach of trust, organized crime and smuggling.
Paudel is the driver of Daojin Wang, the alleged mastermind behind the gold smuggling scam. Tsering is in custody following his arrest in connection with the smuggling of 60 kg gold in July. Gurung is still at large.
The customs office at the Tribhuvan International Airport had confiscated 730 e-cigarettes from a Chinese national named Li Hansong who arrived on a Fly Dubai flight on December 25, 2022.
When Li claimed that the e-cigarettes were brought for business purpose, Chief Customs Officer Mukti Prasad Shrestha had ordered confiscation of the e-cigarettes giving one to the Chinese national for the latter’s use pointing that goods brought for commercial purpose cannot be cleared from the passengers’ section.
The Chinese national, who was allowed to leave after confiscation of the e-cigarettes, left Nepal after staying here for a few days.
The authorities found out that the e-cigarettes were actually gold only after investigations when a staffer at the customs office realized that the e-cigarettes had been changed from the store.
A non-gazetted first-class official of TIA Customs Office Rewant Khadka and customs agent Dinesh Basnet had collaborated to change the e-cigarettes, extracted around nine kilograms of gold from the e-cigarettes and sold it for Rs 60 million by then.
The Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) had then investigated and filed a case against five people after the incident came to light.
The Maharas and others had put pressure to get the goods released from the Customs Office after the gold was recovered. The CIB had investigated them after they were also found to be connected to the scam.
The CIB had arrested Rahul but let his father Krishna Bahadur go after making him sign a document.
