Police flay public prosecutors

KATHMANDU, March 1: Police officials have openly shamed public prosecutors claiming in a special report that the latter were greatly manipulating criminal cases for financial benefit.



In a recent meeting with the newly appointed Attorney General Yubaraj Sangraula, top police officials presented a report detailing major cases of the year 2010 that "public prosecutors manipulated with sheer ill intent". [break]



The report notes how public prosecutors attempted to misapply laws in connection with the likes of Yunus Ansari case and VOIP scandal, besides enunciating how the government attorneys manipulate gambling and fraud cases and, most dreadfully, how they weaken investigations by leaking facts to the defendants.



The report mentions that the Kathmandu District Attorney´s Office (KADO) applied Nepal Rastra Bank Act instead of the Muluki Ain as sought by Nepal Police in Yunus Ansari´s fake currency case.



Metropolitan Police Range Kathmandu had prepared a chargesheet accusing Ansari of guilty of forgery under Clause 8 of Muluki Ain and demanding three years jail term and fine equivalent to the fraud amount for Ansari. However, KDAO chose to invoke article 95 (1) and 96 (1) of Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) Act 2001 which simply deals with cases of foreign currency exchange, not forgery.



Ansari was arrested on January 1, 2010 for allegedly possessing fake Indian currency notes totaling over Rs 2.54 million.



Nepal Police has also questioned the district attorney´s intent behind setting free internet service providers (ISPs) implicated in the VOIP scandal. KDAO had set free ISP companies Mercantile Communications, Cherry International and I Plus on December 26, 2010 though they, police claimed, had knowingly provided internet service to the VOIP racketeers.



Public prosecutors have also been lashed in the report for freeing gamblers rather than putting them on trial as per the Gambling Act 2020 BS. The report has also mentioned how the KDAO decided to free Narayan Prasad Upadhya, the defendant of a fraud case, on October 7, 2010.



“We also stressed that the government should take action against public prosecutors who maim cases for their vested interests by leaking information,” said a senior official who briefed on the report.



Public prosecutors were subject to controversies following the revelation of manipulations in Raju Gorkhali´s case in 2009. They were found to have connived with the officials of Kathmandu District Court to secretly release Gorkhali, a prime accused in a murder case. It led to the transfer of the then district court judge but left the public prosecutors unscathed.

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