Special Court remands Shankar Agrawal as Supreme Court bails Amit Mor

In a pair of significant legal developments involving high-profile corporate figures, Nepal's judiciary this week issued contrasting rulings in financial crime and illicit wealth cases involving prominent industrialists Shankar Lal Agrawal and Amit Mor.

On Tuesday, the Special Court ordered Shankar Lal Agrawal, chairman of the conglomerate Shankar Group, to be remanded to judicial custody in connection with a money laundering charge, as reported by Clickmandu. The joint bench—comprising Special Court Chairman Basudev Acharya and judges Hemanta Rawal and Bidur Koirala—issued the detention order after Agrawal appeared before the court for a preliminary hearing on the illicit wealth indictment.

The Special Court's decision came two weeks after Agrawal secured release on bail from the Supreme Court in a separate banking offense case. As reported by Onlinekhabar and Clickmandu, a division bench of Supreme Court Justices Balkrishna Dhakal and Nripadhwaja Niroula had on September 16 quashed an earlier remand ruling issued by the Patan High Court, granting him bail set at Rs 1 million. Clickmandu noted that the apex court considered Agrawal's age and health conditions, alongside findings that he held no executive position or shareholding in Jagdamba Steels, was not a signatory to disputed consortium loan documents or land earnest agreements, and that the contentious loans had already been regularized.

Meanwhile, in a separate money laundering probe, the Supreme Court on Monday ordered the release of industrialist Amit Mor on a bail bond of Rs 10 million, according to reports by Clickmandu and Nepal News. Justices Abdul Aziz Musalman and Balkrishna Dhakal overturned an August remand order from the Special Court that had sent the former Himalayan Re-Insurance director to Dillibazar Prison.

Nepal News reported that the Special Court had initially produced a split verdict regarding Mor's pre-trial detention, with two judges voting for remand while one favored setting bail at Rs 10 million. The prosecution, spearheaded by the Central Investigation Bureau of Nepal Police and the Department of Money Laundering Investigation, accused Mor and fellow board members of illicit transactions related to Himalayan Re-Insurance's committee decision to execute share trading through Bhrikuti Stock, also known as Broker Number 55.

Both Clickmandu and Nepal News reported that the Supreme Court deemed Mor's solitary detention improper because other co-defendants had already obtained bail. Those previously bailed in the case include Himalayan Re-Insurance Chairman Shekhar Golchha, Shubhechha Kharel, Rajiv Mor, and Rohit Gupta, the latter having secured apex court bail on September 2.