Kathmandu, Jan 27. The corruption case linked to the purchase of Teramax technology, filed against former minister Mohan Bahadur Basnet and 15 others, is set for a hearing at the Special Court.
The case will be heard by a bench of judges Narayan Prasad Paudel, Hemant Rawal, and Dilliratna Shrestha.
The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority has sought recovery of Rs 3.51 billion from the accused. Basnet faces charges of approving the Teramax procurement based on his own proposal without conducting any prior study. At the time, he approved the purchase of a system for international call monitoring and VOIP control while endorsing the budget and program of the autonomous Nepal Telecommunications Authority.
Former authority chair Digambar Jha is accused of pushing to implement Teramax without a legal framework in place. Earlier studies had advised that monitoring of citizens’ calls and data could only begin after laws were enacted. Despite this, Jha approved the procurement decision on January 21, 2017.
The anti-graft body alleges Jha repeatedly tabled proposals at board meetings and applied pressure with bad intent, even though the annual budget is presented only once.
Cases have also been filed against former board members Dhanraj Gyawali and Tika Prasad Upreti. Gyawali, who represented the board while serving as a joint secretary at the Law Ministry, is accused of backing decisions that violated a Supreme Court directive barring access to call detail records without court approval.
The commission claims Basnet, Jha, Gyawali, and Upreti acted in collusion, even taking decisions in the absence of two experts.
People’s News Monitoring Service
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