Law to catch up 5,000 criminals

Ananta Raj Luitel

KATHMANDU: Criminals, in the capital, beware. As per the law enforcement agencies, around 5,000 convicted criminals are roaming freely.

But efforts are on to round them up. Courts in the Kathmandu Valley will issue orders shortly to put them behind bars. The legal recourse comes in the wake of Nepal Police’s plea.

A copy of a recent letter, written by the Metropolitan Police Range, Lalitpur, to the District Court, which is in possession with The Himalayan Times, lays bare the grave law and order concern.

The police have urged the court to give them the legal cushion to nab the convicts since violation of the rule of law has become a common occurrence. Interestingly, the law enforcement agencies have not been able to execute verdicts passed even in 1950.

“The police have sought details of the criminals, who have been convicted for the past 60 years. We’re compiling the details and will forward them to the police,” said Chitra

Bahadur KC, chief, verdict implementation section, Kathmandu District Court.

But it is a time-consuming and painstaking task since the police wanted the following details of the convicts: names and addresses, their offenses, quantum of punishment and the penalty awarded by the courts.

“We’ve recently forwarded the details of the verdicts between 1950 and 1964,” said Beda Prasad Timalsina, spokesperson, Lalitpur District Court (LDC). With the justice delayed, the LDC has urged the police to arrest the “free convicts” for implementation of the verdicts. Take the case of Bishne Basnet, a Lalitpur resident. Though he was convicted for robbery in 1950, he never served the jail term. Neither did he pay up the fine, amounting to Rs 1,278. This is the oldest case in the LDC’s history.

Anta Bahadur Ghimire Khatri, Kajiman Bada, Man Bahadur Tamang, Purnabal Tamang have all been convicted in criminal cases before 1960. But all of them have gone scot-free and also never paid the fine. Timalsina promised that action would be taken soon.

“We’ve given our consent to arrest 27 convicts. They were sentenced between 1950 and 1964. We’re now looking at the other backlog cases,” he added.