By IANS
Kathmandu : An influential member of Nepal’s royal family, who had been enjoying impunity despite being blacklisted for defaulting on bank loans, has finally landed behind bars after tangling with an Indian student, reports said.
Diwakar Chand, who is married to King Gyanendra’s cousin and was one of the royal advisors during the king’s 15-month regime, was arrested from his palatial residence here Thursday after an Indian student complained that he had cheated her of Nepali Rs.3.2 million.
The suave 60-year-old had been running an educational institution in Mahendranagar town in Kanchanpur district in farwest Nepal, near the Indian border.
The Global Education Foundation allegedly amassed millions from students, promising to get them admission in medical colleges.
An Indian student, Neelam Kumari, filed a police complaint alleging Chand had taken Rs.3.2 million from her, falsely promising to get her admitted to a medical college, the Naya Patrika daily reported Friday.
When police came to arrest him from his residence Thursday, Chand reportedly asked the officers: “Did you inform his majesty the king before coming to arrest me?”
Despite his connections, Chand has been kept in detention in the Hanumandhoka police station in Kathmandu, along with other criminals, the daily said.
Besides the Indian, dozens of other students too were reportedly duped by Global Education Foundation that offered to return their money by writing cheques that subsequently bounced.
During King Gyanendra’s direct rule, the Credit Information Bureau under Nepal’s central bank had blacklisted Chand for not repaying the loan he took from a bank to run a hotel along with other promoters.
Though his passport was said to have been seized after the fall of the royal regime, the multiparty government did not take any other punitive action against Chand or other blacklisted royals, who include the king’s sister, brother-in-law and nephews.
Chand is also senior vice president of the World Hindu Federation, a socio-religious organisation that became discredited after it threw its weight behind the king’s coup in 2005 and enjoyed state largesse for campaigning for the king at home, and abroad, including in India.
He is married to Rajani, daughter of King Gyanendra’s aunt Rama Bharati.
A commoner before his marriage, Chand is said to have owed his rise in fortune to his sister Charlie, who used to teach in a Kathmandu college.
Rajani was one of her students and the marriage was reportedly solemnised after Charlie’s mediation.
It still remains to been seen if the law will take its course regarding Chand.
Though a commission formed soon after the king’s ouster recommended action against the monarch as well as his key aides, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s government kept the report under wraps for more than a year.
When parliament ordered the government to make the report public, it did so reluctantly last month, but still without taking any step to indict the king.