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Kathmandu, Dec 15: The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority has filed an appeal at the Supreme Court against former secretary Bhim Upadhyay and others, accusing them of corruption in the Melamchi Drinking Water Project.

The anti-graft body said it moved the apex court on Sunday after expressing dissatisfaction with a verdict earlier delivered by the Special Court.

Those named in the appeal include the then chair of the Melamchi Water Supply Development Committee and former secretaries at the Ministry of Water Supply, Dr Sanjay Sharma, Bhim Prasad Upadhyay and Gajendra Kumar Thakur, along with former board member of the committee Mukunda Prasad Paudel.

According to the CIAA, the accused fixed project milestones without proper study or analysis while rushing plans to bring water to the Kathmandu Valley. Despite knowing that the contractor lacked capacity and faced weak cash flow, which slowed project progress, they allegedly acted against contract terms and existing laws to provide undue financial benefit to the contractor.

The commission also accused them of releasing additional mobilisation advances to the contractor in two instalments beyond the legal limit, failing to recover amounts claimed under provisional payments in submitted bills, and not deducting and recovering rental charges that should have been assessed and withheld from each interim payment certificate.

The CIAA said these actions caused losses to state property and unlawfully benefited the contractor, amounting to corruption. It sought action under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 2002.

Earlier, in a case filed by the commission, the Special Court in Kathmandu had delivered its verdict on September 16, 2024, granting partial acquittal to the defendants.

In a statement issued by CIAA assistant spokesperson Ganesh Bahadur Adhikari, the commission said the Special Court ruling was flawed as it allowed those involved in causing losses to public property to go unpunished. People’s News Monitoring Service