The Baglung District Court has taken the statement of Dev Kumar Nepali, the mayor of Dhorpatan Municipality who was arrested on cooperative fraud charge.
Nepali gave his statement to a single bench of Judge Ramesh Kanta Adhikari regarding his involvement in cooperative fraud on Monday.
The Dhorpatan mayor is also the chairman of Image Savings and Credit Cooperative operating in Pokhara and Baglung. He has been accused of misappropriating over Rs 2 billion of the depositors’ savings from these two places.
Nepali told the court said that he will return the money of the cooperatives’ depositors by selling his property, according to an official who was present in the court on Monday.
Nepali had earlier contacted depositors and told them that he would return their money by selling his property. He had also made the same promise in a letter written to the parliamentary special inquiry committee formed to investigate cooperative fraud.
Indian police had arrested Nepali from the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi on Friday. He was taken to Baglung on Sunday.
As the court has finished taking Nepali’s statement, it will hold a bail hearing on Tuesday to decide whether to send him to prison or release him on date, Baglung’s district government attorney Purna Prasad Sharma said.
Nepali had been absconding since June last year. Police had issued a red corner notice against him through Interpol in January after he remained at large for a long time.
A case was filed against 11 people including Nepali at the Baglung District Court on July 10 last year.
A total of 1,481 people had filed complaints against Nepali and other cooperative promoters.
Investigations showed that more than Rs 1.5 billion of the savings of 800 shareholders and 3,200 depositors of the cooperative had been misappropriated in Baglung.
He is also accused of misappropriating another Rs 500 million of more than 500 depositors from the cooperative in Pokhara.
Nepali was reelected mayor of Dhorpatan from CPN-UML during the local level elections held in May 2022.
He had left CPN (Maoist Center) and joined UML before the 2017 local elections as he was not given a ticket to contest the election.
UML had suspended him as Gandaki province committee member in June last year after he was linked to the cooperative fraud case.
