The Kathmandu District Court has ordered the release on bail of Arjun Kumar Karki, then-secretary of Nepal Trust, and former joint secretary Lekh Bahadur Karki, who were arrested in connection with irregularities in leasing land registered in the name of Nepal Trust.
On Wednesday, the court ordered Arjun Kumar to be released on a bail of Rs 600,000 and Lekh Bahadur on a bail of Rs 1 million.
According to Deepak Kumar Shrestha, information officer at the Kathmandu District Court, the court has also ordered that if they fail to deposit the bail amount, detention warrants should be issued and they should be sent to the prison concerned.
The Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police arrested Lekh Bahadur on November 7 and Arjun Kumar on November 16 on charges of fraud and criminal breach of trust.
Lekh Bahadur, a resident of Bharatpur Metropolitan City-15 in Chitwan, is a retired government official.
According to the investigation, while leasing Nepal Trust’s land located at Durbar Marg, Kathmandu Metropolitan City-1, to Thamserku Trekking Pvt Ltd, a lease agreement was signed by including an additional plot of land without a decision from the Trust’s board of directors and without any legal basis.
Under the agreement signed on May 28, 2017, land initially designated for a three-year construction period under the build-operate-transfer (BOT) model was leased for 30 years.
According to police, preliminary investigations showed that Trust officials, employees, and other individuals received illegal benefits during the process.
