KATHMANDU: Special Court has acquitted former Minister for Communication and Information Technology Mohan Bahadur Basnet in the high-profile corruption case involving the procurement of the Telecommunication Traffic Monitoring and Fraud Control System (TERAMOCS) by the Nepal Telecommunications Authority.

The verdict was delivered by a bench comprising Judges Hemanta Rawal, Dilliratna Shrestha, and Umesh Koirala. The court found only the then Board of Directors of the Nepal Telecommunications Authority criminally liable in the case.

Former Authority Chairperson Digambar Jha was sentenced to one year in prison and fined Rs 50,000. Former board members Dhan Raj Gyawali and Tika Prasad Upreti were each sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and fined Rs 50,000.

The court also acquitted Purushottam Khanal, Achyutananda Mishra, Surendra Lal Hada, Bijay Kumar Rai, Rewati Raj Pantha, Dipesh Acharya, Suresh Basnet, Hiranya Prasad Bastakoti, Sandip Adhikari, as well as the CEO of Vanrise Solutions, its local agent, and several other defendants.

The case was filed in May last year by Nepal’s Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), which alleged corruption in the procurement of the TERAMOCS system by the Nepal Telecommunications Authority.