The Special Court has sentenced Saroj Bhattarai, the then senior engineer at the Lumbini Development Trust (LDT), to six years in prison in a corruption case.
A bench of Special Court Chairman Tek Narayan Kunwar and members Tej Narayan Singh Rai and Ritendra Thapa announced Bhattarai’s prison sentence on Thursday. It also fined him Rs 8 million.
The bench had convicted Bhattarai of corruption on June 6.
The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) had filed a corruption case against Bhattarai at the Special Court on April 7. The anti-graft body had accused Bhattarai of taking a bribe of Rs 8 million from a construction company contracted with the LDT when he was the chief of the LDT’s planning section.
Bhattarai was accused of seeking bribe from the contractor company to purchase two plots of land in Gundu of Bhaktapur. He had asked Rs 8 million to be deposited in the bank accounts of the land seller and the agent.
The court ruled that Bhattarai had purchased the land by taking a bribe from the promoter of the construction company. It has ordered confiscation of the land.
Although he was a senior engineer at the LDT, Bhattarai had been working as the chief of the planning section for the past seven years.
Bhattarai’s five-year term as planning section chief was to end on May 19, 2022, but the then tourism minister Prem Ale Magar had appointed him for another term on February 15, 2022.
