The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) has filed a corruption case at the Special Court against 21 persons claiming irregularities in Sikta Irrigation Project, a national pride project.

The anti-graft body filed the case against former minister and Rastriya Prajatantra Party (Democratic) leader Bikrm Pandey, three former project chiefs, incumbent project chief and nine undersecretary level engineers.

The CIAA has claimed a fine of Rs 21.3 billion from Pandey. Pandey had contested in the recently held election for federal parliament seat from Chiwan constituency-3 with Nepali Congress (NC)’s. He, however, lost to Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a common candidate of then CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Centre) alliance.

Pandey had served as Forest Minister in Cabinet led by Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur tenure in 2017.

The graft case was also filed against incumbent project chief Sarbadev Prasad and project’s senior divisional engineer. The CIAA has not sought fine from them.

The CIAA has sought a fine of Rs 593.4 million from former project chief Sharad Chandra Pandit, Rs 1.56 billion from Dilip Bahadur Karki, and Rs 2.12 billion from Ramesh Basent.

The corruption case has also been filed against senior division engineers Surya Dev Thapa, Yogendra Mishra, Shyam Bahadur Karki, Sushil Chandr Devkota, Krishna Prasad Subedi, Prem Raj Ghimire, Bir Singh Dhami and Prakash Bahadur Karki.

The charge-sheet has made engineers of Irrigation Department Kamal Prasad Regmi, Rabinath Babu Shrestha and Ashish Bhandra Khanal as defendants.

The case has also been lodged against Yuva Raj Chhetri of Kalika Construction. Similarly, the case has also been filed against Uddhav Raj Chaulagain, Hemnidhi Sharma and Arun Kumar Chaudhary.