Metropolitan Police Range, Bhaktapur, arrested Ramesh Shahi, 29, who was on the run for over a year after being convicted of foreign employment fraud, from his house yesterday afternoon. 

The proprietor of Blue World Consultancy located at Gyaneshwor, Kathmandu, was slapped with a three-year jail term and Rs 22.5 million in fine. In April 2013, Patan Appellate Court had upheld Bhaktapur District Court’s decision and convicted him of fraud. 

The Central Investigation Bureau of Nepal Police, on May 27, arrested one Kala Paudel, a fraud convict, who was on the run for the past five months after the Kathmandu District Court, slapped her with a nine-month jail term and Rs 10.2 million in fine on December 2013. 

Not long ago, Ram Bhakta Thapa, 41, who had been absconding for the past two years after Kathmandu District Court, on March 2012, sentenced him to one year in jail and slapped him with a fine of Rs 2 million for cheating case, was nabbed by CIB on May 23. 

The apex investigating body of the law enforcement agency alone has rounded up as many as nine absconding convicts on fraud charges so far this fiscal year. Of them, seven were convicted of foreign employment fraud and were absconding for a year to over five years. The offenders were sentenced from one year up to 3.6 years in jail. 

During the same period, CIB also managed to nab a convict against whom the Interpol had issued a Red Corner Notice. Bishnu Bahadur Tamang, 33, who was convicted of foreign employment fraud on January 11, 2010, landed in police net on May 2 this year. 

The Interpol had issued a Red Corner Notice against him on August 1 last year. Tamang and two others had swindled Rs 21.06 million from 320 foreign job aspirants in 2007. According to investigating officials, most of the convicts would defraud youths by promising them lucrative jobs or study opportunity in various countries, including the United States, Canada, Italy and Portugal, among others, while some were involved in human trafficking as well. 

Likewise, other fraud cases were about swindling money by assuring people of providing flats of housing apartment yet to be constructed and cheating a client with a piece of land of a substandard quality.

Law enforcement officials say that they have launched a manhunt to nab absconding convicts of various charges. “The search for those offenders who are on the run is our top priority,” said an official at CIB. “The guilty must be brought to book sooner or later to discourage the growing culture of impunity,” he added.

Published on: 1 June 2014 | The Himalayan Times