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🇳🇵 Nepal /Crime & Justice

Nepal reopens probe into 500 missing travel documents after 15 years

From Kathmandu Post · () English

Translated from English, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

News Named sources Ongoing story
  • Nepal is reopening a 15-year-old case involving 500 missing blank travel documents from the Foreign Ministry.
  • A chargesheet against a joint secretary over illegal travel documents for Tibetan refugees has prompted investigators to re-examine the larger disappearance.
  • The Central Bureau of Investigation is now investigating who was involved in the original disappearance and where the documents were misused.

Fifteen years after 500 blank travel documents vanished from Nepal's Foreign Ministry, a recent chargesheet has forced investigators to reopen the unresolved case. The disappearance resurfaced when a German Embassy official flagged in 2010 that Tibetan refugees were traveling on Nepali documents they shouldn't have obtained.

Last month, the Kathmandu District Court filed a case against Pushpa Raj Bhattarai, a joint secretary at the Foreign Ministry, for illegally issuing travel documents to five Tibetan refugees in 2009. This investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CIB) revealed a deeper issue: three of the documents in question belonged to a batch of 500 that went missing from the ministry's store section in 2009 and were never accounted for.

The CIB has begun a supplementary investigation into who was involved in the other travel documents that went missing from the ministry at the time and where the misuse took place.

— Uma Prasad ChaturvediChief of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CIB) confirming the reopening of the investigation into the missing documents.

The CIB has now launched a supplementary investigation into the remaining 497 missing documents. "The CIB has begun a supplementary investigation into who was involved in the other travel documents that went missing from the ministry at the time and where the misuse took place," confirmed AIG Uma Prasad Chaturvedi, chief of the CIB. "The remaining matters will become clear only after the investigation."

The missing documents first came to light in 2010 during an unrelated investigation into a passport section officer, Bachchuram KC, who was arrested for helping foreign nationals obtain Nepali passports with forged documents. KC's disclosures pointed to a wider network, leading investigators to discover the 500 missing travel documents. Internal checks revealed that documents intended for Nepal's missions in Cairo and Bangkok were released without their requests ever being logged, raising questions about failures in coordination between the ministry sections.

The remaining matters will become clear only after the investigation.

— Uma Prasad ChaturvediChief of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CIB) on the expected outcome of the supplementary investigation.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by Kathmandu Post in English. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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