The Supreme Court (SC) has ordered release of former chief of the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) Deep Basnet on bail of Rs 500,000.
A joint bench of Justices Ishwore Prasad Khatiwada and Ananda Mohan Bhattarai has granted bail to Basnet pointing that he is old at 68 and is suffering from heart ailments and COVID-19.
The Special Court had sent Basnet to judicial custody in corruption case related to the Baluwatar land grab on December 13, 2020.
He has been charged for taking the proposal for expansion of the prime minister's official residence in Baluwatar to the Cabinet as physical infrastructure and planning secretary. The Cabinet decision had facilitated the land grab.
Basnet has been accused of illegally transferring government assets to others, preparing document with ill-intention of harming the government, and incurring harm and loss of government assets.
The probe committee formed by the government under former secretary Sharada Prasad Trital had submitted the report to the government in December 2018 concluding that the land transferred to individuals in Baluwatar belonged to the government.
The committee's report stated that the government land inside Lalita Residence reached to different individuals due to Cabinet decisions under many prime ministers. It had recommended that the land should be taken back by revoking a few of those Cabinet decisions.
UML leader Bishnu Paudel was also dragged in the scam as eight annas of grabbed land (plot number 309 and 3015) had been transferred to his son from Uma Dhakal and Madhavi Subedi, wives of Shobha Kanta Dhakal and Ram Prasad Subedi identified as land mafia by the Trital committee.
Some UML leaders citing the then prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal have told Setopati that Paudel facilitated Cabinet decisions to provide grounds for the land grab and had even arranged donation of Rs 40 million to the party in return for the decisions.
But Paudel was not charged in the case after his son agreed to return the government land once the scam came to the fore.
The committee stated that the then king Mahendra after the coup in 1961 had confiscated 14 ropanis land of Nepali Congress leader Suvarna Shumsher Rana and his father Kanchan Shumsher in Baluwatar. The government four years later acquired 285 ropanis of Rana's land in Baluwatar by paying compensation.
The PM's residence, chief justice's residence, speaker's residence and the central office of Nepal Rastra Bank are currently situated in 172 ropanis out of that 285 ropanis. Land mafia in connivance with staffers at the Land Revenue Office has transferred ownership of the remaining 113 ropanis of land to different individuals, the committee has concluded.
The land owned by Paudel was out of that 113 ropanis.
