Nepal court sentences former ministers over refugee resettlement scam

A Nepal court has sentenced two former ministers and more than a dozen other people over a scam that promised Nepali citizens resettlement abroad by falsely presenting them as refugees, a court official said. Kathmandu district court information officer Shiva Khatiwada said former deputy prime minister Top Bahadur Rayamajhi was sentenced on Tuesday to four years in prison and fined 40,000 rupees, about $260. He said former interior minister Bal Krishna Khand was sentenced to two years in prison and fined 20,000 rupees. Khatiwada said the district court also convicted and sentenced 14 other people, while seven defendants were acquitted. The source said the racket involved senior officials and targeted Nepalis who had missed out on a third-country resettlement programme for ethnic Nepalis who fled Bhutan. It said the scheme promised to pass victims off as refugees in exchange for large sums of money. More than 100,000 ethnic Nepalis fled Bhutan in the early 1990s after changes to nationality laws. Many later resettled in the United States, Europe and elsewhere through a third-country programme that ran from 2007 to 2018 after years of failed negotiations on their return to Bhutan. The source said Bhutan introduced a "One Nation, One People" policy in 1985 that stripped citizenship rights from the Nepali-speaking Lhotshampa minority and labelled them immigrants. It also said Bhutan made national dress compulsory and restricted use of the Nepali language. According to Nepali media cited in the source, the case involved hundreds of victims who said the racket took their money but did not help them. Nepali police made the first arrests in March 2023 after receiving several complaints.