Dilli Ram Dhital, a permanent resident of Jhurkiya-9, Morang, was working in Malaysia for over a decade. He returned home in November when his mother died. 

When it was time to return to work, he applied for Machine Readable Passport in place of his old handwritten passport, which he had acquired on April 29, 2001 and renewed on September 30, 2005.

Then he faced an unprecedented problem. When he went to the Department of Passport to collect his MRP early this month, he faced a barrage of questions from DoP officials, who expressed doubt about the authenticity of his citizenship card. Dhital was told someone else had already acquired an MRP on his name. Dhital was at his wit’s end. 

How did it happen? 

During DoP’s investigation, it was found that someone had obtained an MRP from the Embassy of Nepal in Thailand by ‘submitting Dhital’s citizenship certificate’ on September 20, 2013 (2070-06-14 BS).

Dhital’s citizenship certificate bears the number 12260, he is son of Balaram Dhital of Jhurkiya-9, Morang, and he was born on June 24, 1976 (2033-03-11 BS). He had obtained the document on May 20, 1994 (2051-02-06 BS) from Morang District Administration Office. The document was authenticated by then Assistant Chief District Officer Ratna Kaji Bajracharya.

“My citizenship is genuine. My father is still alive,”Dhital told THT. “Whoever has used my citizenship to acquire MRP is fraud.” Morang DAO too has started its own investigation and it is still to ascertain who is genuine and who is fraud. 

Preliminary investigation has shown that the person who obtained the MRP from the Thailand mission had obtained a duplicate copy of Dhital’s citizenship certificate from Morang DAO on December 17, 2003 (2060-09-02 BS), and based on that document, he had got MRP from Nepali mission in Thailand.

“We cannot issue passport to Dhital because someone has already acquired a document based on Dhital’s citizenship certificate,” said Lok Bahadur Thapa, Director General, DoP. “We can issue him passport only after Morang DAO confirms that Dhital is the genuine citizenship certificate holder after nullifying the one that is issued to someone in Dhital’s name,” he added. 

Talking to THT, Morang Chief District Officer Ganesh Raj Karki said the person who obtained MRP from Nepali embassy in Thailand had managed to acquire a duplicate copy of Dhital’s citizenship card with the help of some DAO staff.

Officials suspect the person in question could be a foreign national, most probably a Bangladeshi. However, CDO Karki said it was premature to say anything, as investigation was underway. 

Karki added that though that person obtained a duplicate copy of Dhital’s citizenship; his name, picture attached on it, and other details are also mentioned in the DAO’s official record, which means the DAO ‘issued same citizenship certificate to two different persons’.

CDO Karki suspects the fraud could have taken place with the help of some staff at DAO. 

“If DAO staff are found involved in this, action will be taken against them,” he said. 
The whereabouts of the person who had obtained the MRP from the Thailand mission is unknown. Every detail, except photograph, in the passport issued to him matches with citizenship certificate and passport of Dilli Ram Dhital.

According to Karki, now the DAO will invalidate the citizenship certificate of the person who had acquired a duplicate of Dhital’s and write to the DoP to invalidate his MRP obtained from Thailand accordingly, so that Dhital could get his MRP.

Published on: 25 January 2015 | The Himalayan Times