The Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police has arrested five people including an under-secretary in connection with the fake driving license scam.
Superintendent of Police and CIB spokesperson Hobindra Bogati said that they have arrested five people on the charge of involvement in the scam.
Those arrested are Under-secretary at the Ministry of Forests and Environment Keshav Aryal, Padam Raj Acharya, Subash Paudel, Dilip Kumar Shah and Rajesh Lamsal.
The CIB began studying the matter after receiving complaints that driving licenses were being issued through the Department of Transport Management (DoTM) and its subordinate offices in an unauthorized manner.
It was found that licenses were being issued by rigging the electronic driving license (EDL) system.
The DoTM also formed a committee to examine the data stored in the Electronic Driving License and Vehicle Registration System after finding it suspicious that the license numbers issued were not in a serial order.
The committee was headed by Mukesh Regmi, director for information technology at the DoTM. Section Officer at the DoTM Arjun Adhikari, Sabin Shrestha, Bodhraj Baral and Deputy Superintendent of Police at the CIB Tapan Kumar Dahal were members of the committee.
The CIB began investigating the case after the committee submitted its report.
According to the committee’s report, a total of 102,711 fake driving licenses were found to have been issued from various Transport Management Offices across the country in collusion between the employees of those offices and middlemen.
The report says that those involved in making fake licenses were found to have replaced the details on the licenses of those service-seekers who were registered but had not renewed their licenses, who had gone abroad, and who were deceased with new details. Details of many active users were also replaced with new details in the process, according to the report.
