Corruption in the Melamchi Project: Sentencing to three guilty companies and four individuals determined

Kathmandu. The Special Court has sentenced three companies and four individuals after finding them guilty in connection to Melamchi Water Supply Project corruption case.
The bench of Special Court’s Chairperson Tek Narayan Kunwar alongside members Tej Narayan Singh Rai and Murari Babu Shrestha handed down the order of the sentence to the guilty in the case.
The Court on September 11 had convicted former secretary Gajendra Kumar Thakur and three others for their involvement in the corruption case.
Today’s ruling has handed down eight years and one month of imprisonment to all the convicted ones.
The Court has slapped a fine of over Rs 100 million to Thakur, who chaired the Melamchi Drinking Water Committee while similar amount of fine has been imposed on then executive director of the Committee Suryaraj Kandel.
Likewise, the Court seeks to recover over Rs 20 million in fine from Ramchandra Devkota who was also the executive director of the committee as well as accounts responsible officer.
Similarly, Shiva Kumar Sharma, team leader of the design and supervision consultant company- Eptisa Servicios de Ingenieria SL, also received a sentence of eight years but due to his senior citizen status, two years of imprisonment has been exempted from the sentence.
The court has, however, ordered over Rs 20 million in fine from him.
The court, finding another consultant company EPIIMS complicit in the case, has determined over Rs 60 million in fine for it. The court has demanded restitution of over Rs 20 million from BETS finding complicit in the embezzlement.
The Court also slapped over Rs 260 million as a fine on another consulting firm, CMC D Ravenna.
The Commission for Investigation against Abuse of Authority (CIAA) had filed a case against the alleged ones at the Special Court on February 18 this year.
It may be noted that the Special Court has already acquitted Dr Sanjay Sharma, Bhim Prasad Upadhyay, Mukunda Prasad Poudel, Rudra Singh Tamang, Chandra Bahadur Thapa, Ghanashyam Bhattarai, Madibhadra Neupane, Bhoj Bikram Thapa, Ramchandra Neupane, Begnath Poudel and Kedar Prasad Aryal in the same case.