E-Kantipur

DEC 25 - It reads like a script from a crime film. In 2007, businessman Mahesh Murarka was abducted in one of the most high-profile kidnapping cases to have hit the Capital. A ransom of Rs. 50 million was asked for (it isn’t clear how much was actually paid), and Murarka was released five days later. But police investigations revealed this wasn’t a random plan hatched by ordinary criminals who saw easy money. The plan had been masterminded in Mumbai—where Amar Tandon, the lynchpin, was operating from—executed in Kathmandu, and the ransom was delivered in Singapore.

Murarka’s abduction revealed a disturbing international network of criminals executing their plans in the Capital, something that the police wasn’t ready for. While it had been alleged that the Indian mafia dons—both Dawood Ibrahim and Chota Rajan—had operatives based in Kathmandu, Murarka’s abduction was not a plan hatched by either groups. Instead, a new group of organised criminals have come up, which have firmly left their stamp on the Capital.

Earlier this month, Sandip Pathak—self-professed kingpin of the ‘Black Spider’ gang, who was also known as Milan Lama—was arrested at the Nepal-India border in Mahendra Nagar after a five-year manhunt. Lama was behind the attack on Dr. Hemang Dixit in 2006 as the doctor refused to pay extortion money to him. But before he became the leader of the Black Spider, Pathak sold theatre tickets illegally. Here’s a lesson for us all: “If petty criminal activities are not controlled, they evolve into larger, more organised rackets,” says DIG Upendra Kant Aryal.

The presence of an established criminal network in Kathmandu is a rather new phenomenon, according to the police. While crime has always occurred in the Capital, like in any other modern city around the world, it is only in the last decade that organised crime has spread its net to include running businesses like illegal sand mining, demanding ‘protection’ money from shop owners, and networking with international criminals to expand their operations. Police say organised crime expanded after the insurgency ended in 2006, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen before. “The civil war was the main priority of the state so these issues could have been overshadowed,” says Director of the Crime Investigations Bureau (CIB) DIG Rajendra Singh Bhandari, “Criminals find it easy to use a feeble state as an opportunity to expand their activities.”

The advent of technology has only made their job easier. “Today, criminals can communicate with one another from any part of the world,” says Aryal. “Technology is making it easier to commit crime.” With mobile telephony being the favoured means of communication, gangs have found it easier to connect with international criminals. Their activities have expanded accordingly. “Activities like drugs trafficking, human trafficking and arms transactions need international connections,” says SSP Ran Bahadur Chand, chief of the Metropolitan Police Crime Division. “Criminals are often protected in different countries by different groups. But all domestic organised criminals don’t necessarily have international connections.”

Police believe though abductions were the major source of income for organised criminals until a few years back, the trend has changed. Operations have expanded to producing counterfeit Nepali and Indian currency notes, drugs peddling, producing fake academic certificates, smuggling arms and vehicles, financial crimes, and even banking fraud. “Increasing unemployment and urbanisation have pushed a rising number of youth towards criminal activities,” says Bhandari. “They take more risks after they fail to achieve what they want. The lure of power and financial gains also plays a huge role in spawning crime.”

This attraction for the youth often translates into a dynamic criminal environment, where those involved plan and execute their operations meticulously. Police officials claim that organised criminals today are well-equipped and often conduct in-depth research to find out which sectors would bring in the most money. “It seems like they are running an enterprise with different branch offices in various parts of the country. Like any other business organisation, some retire and new recruits are brought in,” says Aryal.

Most organised groups also open up various legitimate fronts to launder their money, and Kathmandu’s criminals are no different. Police believe criminals here have invested in construction, hotels, films, and cable distribution, apart from investing in hawala transactions. They also regularly extort money from dance bars and from ordinary shops as well. “There are reports that all the medical shops near the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital have been rented out by criminal Deepak Manange, who extorts a large amount of money from them,” says Aryal. But most surprisingly, legitimate builders are taking the help of organised criminals to sort out their legal disputes. “The builders take the help of gangs to get plots of land vacated and for settling property related disputes,” says Chand, “Builders often pay protection money to gangs, who reinvest the money back with the builders.” Real estate has traditionally been a major investment sector for organised criminals across the world.

It was to tackle this rise in organised crime that the Crime Investigation Bureau was established in August this year. A Kidnapping Act was introduced in 2006 to address the rise in such crimes after the antiquated Public Offence Act failed to address the problems that come with a modern city. The government is now mulling over an Organised Crime Act, which will, according to Bhandari, work solely towards curbing organised crime and define its nature properly. “The major achievement is that the state has at least realised the need to combat organised crime,” he says.

Yet, it will take the CIB another five to 10 years before it begins to bite. The police force currently lacks proper resources—both in trained manpower and available technology—to fight back the changing nature of crime. The state till now has never been serious about combatting organised crime. But this is slowly changing. The CIB is coordinating with the Supreme Court to track down nearly 66,000 to 67,000 pending criminal cases. The police are also conducting research on local criminals’ connections with international gangs.

Bhandari quotes the recent crackdown on illegal Voice Over Internet Protocol operators and the fraud perpetrated by Unity International as examples of how organised crime is slowly moving into financial crimes as well. But the biggest problem still remains the response of the state and the judiciary. For example, Supreme Court Justice Rana Bahadur Bam has been indicted on charges that he allowed three notorious kidnappers to be released after posting tiny bails. A few months after their release, the three abducted Dr. Bhaktaman Shrestha of the BP Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital in Bharatpur. “If they had not been released, the three couldn’t have abducted Dr. Shrestha. Organised crime can only be tackled in an organised way,” says Aryal. That will take a while.

Posted on: 2010-12-25 10:09

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