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The legal system in Nepal is developing a peculiar talent for pricing freedom. The going rate, it seems, is NPR 27.48mn. That is the amount Rabi Lamichhane, a suspended lawmaker and leader of the Rastriya Swatantra Party, has pledged to the courts in an effort to buy his release from detention. He stands accused of embezzling precisely that sum from a savings and credit cooperative, an accusation backed by months of investigation and endorsed by rulings from all three levels of the judiciary. No new facts have emerged. No procedural errors have been flagged. What has changed is the appearance of a bank guarantee, cobbled together by his relatives, matching the money said to be missing.
The courts should decline his offer.
Lamichhane’s bid to buy his freedom exposes the growing transactionalism infecting the judiciary. Though the Supreme Court has upheld his detention, Lamichhane’s lawyers are now seeking release under a provision of the criminal code meant to permit bail or surety in limited circumstances. They argue reimbursing the loss is tantamount to restitution. In effect they suggest those with the means to repay their alleged crimes should not be detained. The precedent would be dangerous. It implies a market rate for criminal accountability.
The performance surrounding his case has been elaborate. One judge has recused himself. Another has granted delays on grounds of illness. Hearings have slipped. Petitions have multiplied. Each procedural turn buys time. Meanwhile the defence hopes for a reshuffled bench and a more convenient interpretation of the law. That such manoeuvres are available is the real scandal.
The legal system has developed a reputation for malleability. Verdicts are commonly revisited. Judicial assignments are prone to change. Discretion is deployed liberally, if not always logically. The result is not flexibility: it is entropy. Courtrooms resemble auction houses, where the best-prepared bid, not the best-prepared argument, wins.
Cooperative fraud is not a victimless crime. These institutions hold billions of rupees in citizen savings and rely on public trust. The justice system, which purports to protect that trust, cannot afford to behave like a settlement agency for the well-connected. Each successful circumvention undermines both rule of law and financial integrity. If restitution becomes a loophole rather than a remedy, then fraud becomes an investment strategy with an escape clause.
Lamichhane’s political ascent was built on the promise of reform. His supporters see in him a corrective to decades of misrule. That mythology has now collided with the judicial process. If the courts yield, they will validate a new rule: accountability is conditional on liquidity.
Nepal cannot afford that. If money is allowed to settle what law has already decided, then courts will cease to adjudicate. They will transact. The danger is not Lamichhane walks free. It is others learn the price of doing the same. ■
