Mayor of Baglung’s Dhorpatan Municipality Dev Kumar Nepali has been sent to judicial custody in a fraud case related to Pokhara's Image Savings and Credit Cooperative.
On Monday, a bench of Kaski District Court Judge Himlal Belbase ordered Nepali to be sent to judicial custody for further investigation.
Nepali, who had been detained in Baglung District Prison, was brought to the district court on Sunday to record his statement.
After the statement was taken, the court on Monday ordered him to be kept in custody for further investigation, according to the district court’s information officer Damodar Acharya.
Nepali had established Image Savings and Credit Cooperative in two places—one in Baglung and another in Pokhara. Investigations have revealed that a total of Rs 2 billion was embezzled under his leadership in both cooperatives.
Nepali, who was previously the vice-chairman of Pokhara’s Suryadarshan Savings and Credit Cooperative, left the organization after a dispute with the then-chairman GB Rai and established Image Cooperative. Even after becoming mayor of Dhorpatan Municipality, he remained chairman of Image Cooperative in both places.
After depositors demanded their savings back, Nepali went into hiding for 16 months. The Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police arrested him from Delhi, India, and brought him to Nepal on September 27, 2024.
Nepali was then sent to Baglung, where he remained in custody under the Baglung District Court’s order. The Kaski District Court has also ordered that he be kept in Baglung Prison, information officer Acharya said.
The District Government Attorney’s Office, Kaski, has accused Nepali of embezzling Rs 573.58 million from the Pokhara-based Image Cooperative. The government attorney’s office had filed a case against Nepali and 14 others on charges of fraud at Image Cooperative.
Nepali also faces a separate fraud case related to Suryadarshan Cooperative. The government attorney’s report says that Rs 7.75 million was transferred to Nepali’s personal account in an unauthorized manner when he was the cooperative’s vice-chairman and that the amount has not been returned yet.
On Thursday, Kaski District Court Judge Krishna Jung Shah had ordered Nepali to be released on a bail of Rs 2 million in the Suryadarshan Cooperative case. However, Nepali has not deposited the bail amount yet, according to information officer Acharya.
