Nepal Police have issued an arrest warrant against former Energy Minister and CPN-UML Secretary Top Bahadur Rayamajhi and his son Sandeep Rayamajhi on the charge of defrauding Nepali citizens on the pretext of sending them to the United States as Bhutanese refugees.

Similarly, former Home Secretary Tek Narayan Pandey has also been arrested in the same case.

Police had arrested five people on the same charge: Sandesh Sharma, Keshav Dulal, Sagar Rai, Sanu Bhandari and Kumar Gurung. Dulal was the Secretariat of former Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala.

On the basis of the statements of those five arrestees, Indrajit Rai, Security Advisor of the then Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa ‘Badal’ was arrested on Tuesday for being the mastermind of the group behind planning and executing the fraudulent activities.

However, after the arrest of Rai, the names of several politicians and higher-ranking officials are coming out in connection with the case.

Meanwhile, police have also issued arrest warrants against Indrajit’s son Niraj Rai and former Home Minister Thapa’s son Prateek Thapa.

The group had been scamming people for the past five years by promising to send them abroad as refugees while issuing fake documents to some Nepali citizens, identifying them as refugees, to help them go abroad.