Media magnate detained in Nepal for “misusing citizenship”

May 22, Kathmandu, Nepal (India): On Tuesday night, Kailash Sirohiya, the chairman of Kantipur Media Group (KMG) and a media magnate from Nepal, was taken into custody at his office on charges of “misuse of citizenship”.

A group of law enforcement officers, including members of the Kathmandu Valley Crime Investigation

office, took the media mogul into custody from the media group’s headquarters office in Thapathali.

Following the issuance of an arrest warrant by the Dhanusha District Court in connection with a suspected citizenship offense, Sirohiya was taken into custody.

A Dhanusha complaint was made against Sirohiya for allegedly using someone else’s citizenship number on his document of citizenship.

Following the complaint’s filing, Sirohiya released a statement refuting

any transgression. The citizenship number on Sirohiya’s citizenship certificate matched that of a Shivji Sahu Teli, according to many media stories published in recent weeks. After gaining citizenship for the first time in the 1970s, Sirohiya subsequently received a duplicate certificate.

The media mogul restated that he was “targeted with a political motive” as he was led by the police out of his office on Tuesday night.

“Even though I offered to help with the probe, the administration showed its totalitarian tactics. “I will fight to the very end because this is an attack on press freedom,” Sirohiya said.

The biggest privately held media company in the Himalayan region is called Kantipur Media Group.

country, news reports about the embezzlements of Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Rabi Lamichhane have lately been reported.

While Lamichhane was an office bearer for Galaxy TV, he is accused of embezzling cooperative money.

The media magnate had earlier on Tuesday released a statement in which he expressed his willingness to assist with any legal investigation. In addition, he said that Kantipur Daily was threatened with an arrest warrant if it would not release any further stories on cooperative scams.

“It is the media’s responsibility to raise its voice and demand justice and a fair investigation into all those involved in the embezzlement of the hard-earned savings of more than 7.1 million depositors in various cooperatives,” Sirohiya said.

“There is no doubt that the complaint was filed and an arrest warrant against me was issued without any interrogation to blackmail Kantipur into not publishing more reports on the issue and divert public attention,” he said.

Concurrently, the head of Nepal’s biggest conglomerate said that Kantipur would not refrain from speaking out against “wrongdoings,” such as the cooperative “scam.”

“The office bearers who abuse their authority and misuse police administration to exact vengeance against the chairman of a media house based on the news they publish should also answer when there will be an investigation into the individual, who came to power through political bargaining that entailed getting the Attorney General to certify that he would not be prosecuted for holding dual passports,” Sirohiya stated.