Graft-tainted HC judge nominee in the soup

Kathmandu, May 31

The Supreme Court today ordered to procure case files from the Judicial Council in which the JC had decided to keep a corruption charge against district court judge Lekhanath Dhakal pending. Dhakal was named a high court judge amid allegations of corruption.

A single bench of Justice Bam Kumar Shrestha today ordered the JC to procure corruption complaint(s) lodged at the JC against Dhakal.

Umesh Baniya, a resident of Kavrepalanchowk district, had on May 22 challenged the Judicial Council’s decision to keep a corruption complaint filed against Dhakal pending.

Baniya accused Dhakal of extorting money from him and another person who was indicted in a black marketeering case when Dhakal was a district court judge in Kavrepalanchowk.

Baniya had moved the Supreme Court against the JC’s decision to keep the case against Dhakal pending, but the court registrar had refused to entertain his plea following which Baniya challenged the registrar’s order in the SC.

Justice Sapana Pradhan Malla had quashed the registrar’s decision to refuse to register a case against the JC following which Baniya filed the case at the apex court.

Meanwhile, another person Kumar Dahal, who also faced a case of black marketeering and whose case was decided by Dhakal’s bench in Kavrepalanchowk when he was a district court judge, also filed a corruption complaint against Dhakal, demanding probe into the allegation of corruption charges. Dahal said the JC’s decision to keep corruption allegations against Dhakal pending was a mockery of the rule of law.  He urged the JC to keep his complaints together with the complaints filed by Umesh Baniya and probe the case together by procuring case files from the concerned court.

Dahal claimed in the complaints lodged at the JC that Dhakal extorted Rs 1.8 million (nine lakh rupees from Ghanashyam Khatri and Umesh Baniya each) promising to settle their cases.  Dahal has claimed in the complaint that Dhakal deliberately delayed adjudication of accused’s cases so as to extort money from them. He said Dhakal passed three orders against the accused by awarding jail term for some and acquitting others in the same case.

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