The sheer downplaying of the case, ending it up as a mere seizure of “unattended sandalwood”, has come about at a time when the case was expected to expose involvement of a Maoist minister, officials said.[break]
Nawalparasi Police had seized some 2, 000 kilos of red sandalwood from a jungle at Parasi last week acting on a tip-off from Metropolitan Police Crime Division (MPCD) which was investigating into a reported kidnapping within the smuggling racket itself.
Nawalparasi Police, however, hastily termed the seized sandalwood “unattended” and handed it over to District Police Office though it had made the seizure while investigating into a smuggling case.
Krishna Shrestha and Netra Shrestha, who are still detained under public offence charge after the former kidnapped the latter, had confessed that the red sandalwood hidden in Nawalparasi was theirs. Netra had hijacked the sandalwood after he fell out with Krishna over a financial deal.
“We could have implicated them in the sandalwood case had the seized sandalwood not been termed unattended,” said an MPCD official.
Nawalparasi Police chief SP Gyan Bikram Shah, however, claimed that the seized sandalwood was found unattended and no information was given to him about the possible linkages between kidnapping and smuggling. “Now it would be difficult to change the course of the case because the Forest Office has already taken it up,” he said.
It was disclosed by a MPCD investigation that three Maoists -- Dipak Sapkota, Mausam, YCL´s Kathmandu in-charge, and Deepak Chhetri - had paid for the sandalwood consignment that was to be smuggled into Tibet via Nepal. The consignment was hijacked by Netra´s group and hidden by one Prakash Paudel, a Nepali Congress cadre.
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