By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS,
Kathmandu: With scandals mounting about Nepal’s lawmakers being involved in passport frauds, police Tuesday arrested two MPs while a parliamentary committee asked Prime Minister Jhala Nath Khanal to probe media reports about a ruling party minister possessing an Indian passport.
Gayatri Shah, 26, had been the toast of the media as the youngest MP in the 601-seat parliament in 2008, when she was nominated by a minor party, Nepali Janata Dal.
On Tuesday, she was arrested along with Bishwanath Prasad Yadav, a fellow lawmaker from Terai party Madhesi Janadhikar Forum, while leaving the parliament house.
The arrests came after police investigations found them linked to a fake passport scam.
The scam broke in January after a Nepali man and woman, heading towards Australia, were stopped at Abu Dhabi and sent back by the authorities. They were found to have been travelling on the two MPs’ passports with the photographs replaced.
Nepal issues three kinds of passports: green to ordinary people, blue to officials and red to diplomats. All MPs are issued red passports.
Police investigations also indicated more MPs could be involved in the scam.
The growing outcry made the country’s apex corruption investigating body, the Commission for Abuse of Authority, grill the two lawmakers last month, triggering demands by parliament for action against the MPs.
Even as Shah and Yadav were arrested, a parliamentary committee Tuesday asked the prime minister to summon for questioning another MP and minister to have come under a cloud.
Lharkyal Lama, nominated to parliament by the prime minister’s Communist party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist in 2008, hit the headlines this month after he was made finance minister of state.
A section of the media reported that Lama holds the nationality of Nepal, India as well as Tibet.
He was also said to be holding an Indian passport, issued from Guwahati in 1998, in the name of Khenpo Chime Tsering.
The parliamentary committee directed the prime minister to question the minister within three days.
(Sudeshna Sarkar can be contacted at [email protected])