The Special Court (SC) Kathmandu has convicted former commissioner at the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) Raj Narayan Pathak in a corruption case and sentenced him to jail in three years and three months.

A divisional bench of Special Court Chair Shreekant Poudel and justices, Yamuna Bhattarai and Balbhadra Bastola, sentenced Pathak to jail and imposed a fine of Rs 3.9 million for being guilty of attempted corruption.

Similarly, a member of the directors of Nepal Engineering College, Lambodar Neupane, has also been sentenced to prison for three years and slapped with a fine of Rs 3.9 million for corruption.

As Neupane attempted to capture the engineering college property by trying to register it as a private company and the case reached the CIAA, Neupane, and his group, bribed Pathak to settle the issue in their favour.

However, leaked audio and video recordings showed Pathak admitting to accepting the money and Pathak resigned as CIAA commissioner on February 15, 2019.

On March 2019, the CIAA filed a corruption case against Commissioner Pathak after he resigned, accusing him of accepting Rs 7.8 million in bribes to help settle a dispute regarding the ownership of Nepal Engineering College.

According to Dipendra Nath Yogi, spokesperson for the Special Court, the perpetrators were sentenced for ‘attempting to commit corruption’ instead of ‘committing corruption’ as the bribe money could not be recovered.