The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) on Wednesday took nine officials of the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE), including its director Chiranjivi Adhikari, into its custody.

Issuing a press statement on Wednesday, the CIAA informed that the nine officials were arrested on the charge of irregularities as they were involved in issuing work permits to migrant workers on the basis of fake documents.

Besides Adhikari, the CIAA has also taken into its custody section officer Kumar Prasad Pokharel, Gambhirsing Bista, Babulal Regmi, non-gazetted officers Bhim Bahadur Basnet and Laxmi Adhikari and computer operators Sanjeev Nepal and Sushil Shakya.

"We have taken these officials into our custody as they were found issuing work permits to migrant workers on the basis of fake documents,” said CIAA Spokesperson Shreedhar Sapkota. "We took them into custody as there were chances of them manipulating the fake documents and destroying evidence. We have begun interrogating them,” he added.

Sapkota said that the anti-graft body will file corruption cases against the officials after investigation.

CIAA has claimed that the officials had issued work permits to 109 migrant workers for Qatar on January 12 and 63 workers for Dubai on January 24 on the basis of fake documents.

“The number of permits issued to migrant workers is huge and the CIAA has taken it very seriously," said Sapkota.

Earlier, CIAA on December 2013 had also filed a case at the Special Court against director of DoFE Ramesh Prasad Mainali and computer operator Pappu Kumar Sah on the charge of accepting bribes for issuing work permits to migrant workers.

Published on: 20 March 2014 | Republica