HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

KATHMANDU: Sabitri Rajbhandari has gone down in history, but for all the wrong reasons. Rajbhandari today became the first woman ex-bureaucrat to receive jail sentence for misusing power to amass disproportionate wealth.

The Special Court today slapped one-year jail term and a fine of Rs 24.6 million on retired joint secretary Rajbhandari for corruption she committed during her service.

A three-member bench of Judges Gauri Bahadur Karki, Om Prakash Mishra and Kedar Prasad Chalise also ordered confiscation of Rs 28.6 million from her. Rajbhandari is the wife of former chief election commissioner Achyut Raj Rajbhandari, who was appointed to the post by the deposed king Gyanendra.

The bench said Rajbhandari had hidden the money earned through illegitimate means in two fixed accounts of the Himalayan Bank Ltd (Patan) and Nepal Bangladesh Bank (Putalisadak) opened in the name of her married daughter Monisa. The court found that Rajbhandari herself was operating the two accounts.

When asked by investigators, Monisa neither accepted the ownership of the amount nor said the money was owned by her mother.

The court found that Rajbhandari had ‘earned’ the amount — by misusing power when she was the chief of the Department of Customs and deposited the money 23 times.

Monisa has been found to have nominated her mother as the heir of the money. Monisa also failed to show the source of the money. However, she had presented a contract of a housing business she claimed to have been running in partnership with Bijaya Goyal and Sheshkrishna. But the company was not registered.

Rajbhandari retired from service about a decade ago.


Case that continued for seven years

KATHMANDU: The corruption case against former joint secretary Sabitri Rajbhandari dates back to 2005, the year the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority had launched an anti-corruption drive against 22 officials working under the Ministry of Finance. The CIAA had filed the corruption case against Rajbhandari on September 1, 2005, two years after her retirement, but the Special Court had absolved her citing statute of limitations. But the CIAA moved the Supreme Court, challenging the acquittal, and the apex court subsequently asked the Special Court a few months ago to review the case. The CIAA had chargesheeted Rajbhandari claiming that she had amassed Rs 24.6 million by abusing power and had deposited the illegally earned money in the name of her daughter Monisa Rajbhandari (Basnet). The anti-graft body had prosecuted Rajbhandari based on the report of a high-level probe commission which said the Rajbhandari family owned total assets worth Rs 17.5 million, though their legitimate income was only Rs 6 million.