E-Kantipur

KATHMANDU, APR 30 - Immigration official Bhuminanda Bhandari, who was caught in connection with the high profile diplomatic passport scam involving two lawmakers, said to have spilled the beans of the larger nexus between top immigration honchos of  and the racketeers in the scam.

In course of interrogation, Bhandari said that he was only a small fry in the scheme of things and what he did was a crime but he did it in accordance with the instruction of the senior immigration officers at the TIA.

If arrested Bhandari's statements are anything to go by, it was the chief of the immigration office at TIA, Khada Nanda Dhakal who had first telephoned him to make a safe passage to the two persons in possession of tampered diplomatic passports and deported from Abu Dhabi from the TIA. Bhandari also revealed that other immigration officials -- Shyam Bahadur Bhandari, Indra Kumar Sunuwar and Devi Dutta -- had hand in the act of letting the duo a safe passage from the

Sources said three of the immigration officials had been on the run  ever since their names were popped up in the scam. Police have also put chief of immigration office at TIA Dhakal under surveillance while the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority is grilling the latter.

Investigation has so far disclosed that the immigration officials had assisted two persons in possession of tampered passports belonging to lawmakers Gayatri Shah and Bishwanath Prasad Yadav to get off the hook from Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA). Shah and Yadav, who are facing serious charge under Passport Act -- 1976 for selling their passports' are in police custody since April 19.  

Sources said arrested Bhandari and others were on duty at the TIA when two persons -- Prithivi Chhantyal and certain woman -- left Kathmandu on January 16 and they returned after being deported from Abu Dhabi-based immigration office. Both the persons carrying tampered passports were bound to Australia but they were deported two days after being detected that they were not genuine lawmakers. But immigration officials helped the duo slip out of the TIA despite the fact that immigration officials are required to send the deported persons to detention centre of Department of Immigration for further investigation.

Bhandari and his associates had reportedly taken the tampered passports from Chhantyal and the woman and handed them to Santosh Uprety, a passport forgery racketeer, of Sarlahi. Uprety, who is still at large, later handed those passports to the lawmakers, who later possessed the passports with their pictures re-affixed on them.

The deported persons, who are still at large, had told the Abu Dhabi-based officials that they had paid Rs. 16 million, the amount is yet to be ascertained, to Kathmandu-based agents -- Manoj Karki and Ashish Sherpa -- to procure the diplomatic passports to travel to Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and many other countries. Meanwhile, the police said that the arrested lawmakers had not been cooperating with the investigating officers to make it clear their role in the scam. But the police have already collected substantial evidence that the lawmakers had sold their passports to make fast

Posted on: 2011-05-01 03:27

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