Syangja police arrest three officials in citizenship forgery case
Syangja police arrested three District Administration Office employees on November 2 on suspicion of forging government records, more than seven weeks after the office referred the case to them.
Police in Syangja have arrested three employees of the District Administration Office on suspicion of forging and tampering with government records, Onlinekhabar and Nepal Bahas reported. Police took them into custody on November 2 with the district court's permission. The court has granted five more days of remand for the investigation, district police spokesperson DSP Ramesh Datt Awasthi told Onlinekhabar on November 3. The three are accused; no court has ruled on the charge.
Awasthi named the detainees as Suryaprasad Sharma Paudel, the administrative officer at the time, accountant Ramesh BK, and computer operator Bishnuprasad Chapagain. He said the case, brought in the government's name on the District Administration Office's complaint, is one of forging documents.
According to Onlinekhabar, the case came to light when the Kaski District Administration Office, checking papers submitted for two children's identity cards, found two citizenship certificates registered in one person's name. Kaski asked its Syangja counterpart for the decision and papers behind the cancellation of the earlier certificate, and Syangja Chief District Officer Nirajan Ghimire said that search showed the office's own records had been tampered with. The administration alleges that documents were drawn up to show a citizenship certificate had been cancelled on a decision, when no such decision had been taken.
After an inquiry, the Syangja office wrote to the police on September 11 asking for an investigation and action, Onlinekhabar reported, but police gave no public sign of progress for weeks. A complaint on the government's Hello Sarkar platform on October 8 accused the police of delay. The Ministry of Home Affairs wrote to the Syangja office on October 14 asking for necessary action, and the office wrote to the police again on October 26, Ghimire said. The arrests came about a week after that letter.
Police did not give the dates on which the case was registered or the court's permission for the arrests was obtained. Awasthi told Onlinekhabar those details were not needed for the report, and SP Ranjit Singh Rathore, who heads the district police office, said he could not give them either once the spokesperson had said they could not be shared. Onlinekhabar noted that police have given such procedural details to the media before and have not named a legal or procedural reason for withholding them this time.
In a separate case reported by Gorkhapatra and Jana Aastha, Syangja police arrested Narendra Ranpal, 25, of Waling Municipality-8, who had not served a two-month-and-one-day prison term given by a court in an earlier drug case. Police said they found 55 grams of marijuana and ampoules of buprenorphine, Phenergan and diazepam at his home. Awasthi said the Syangja District Court allowed seven more days of remand for investigation in the new drug case. Ranpal is accused in that case; it has not been decided.