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On June 19, the Special Court cleared former minister Bikram Pandey and 20 others of the charge of misappropriating more than Rs 2 billion from the Sikta Irrigation Project.

Earlier that month, the same court had exonerated Raj Kumar Rauniyar, former vice-chancellor at Dharan’s BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, in a bribery case. He was caught in his own office with Rs 800,000 in unaccounted for cash.

Similarly, on May 30, the court had given a clean chit to Surendra Bahadur Thapa, assistant attorney at Pokhara-based Public Prosecutor’s Office, on charges of bribery and amassing illegal wealth.

The above verdicts are cases in point of how the Special Court has been acquitting politicians and senior bureaucrats implicated in high-profile bribery and corruption cases.

This trend reportedly started after Srikanta Poudel was appointed the court’s chair along with Ramesh Kumar Pokharel, Yamuna Bhattarai, Shaligram Koirala, Balbhadra Banstola and Khusi Prasad Tharu as members, back in February.

The Thapa-led team started looking into the cases from March 7 and since then, they have passed down 216 not-guilty verdicts against 24 guilty ones.

In the Nepali month of Chaitra (mid-March to mid-April), they ruled on 44 cases, issuing 38 acquittals and eight convictions. The month prior, the bench handed down 36 acquittals and six guilty rulings.

Advocate Srihari Aryal says while there are plenty of malpractices in the judiciary, the high acquittal rate in corruption cases is mainly the result of insubstantial evidence.

“I’m not claiming that our judiciary is free of corruption. In fact, I was part of the team that prepared a report to expose corruption and malpractice in our courts. But in these cases, it is the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority that should be answerable,” he says. “When 90 percent of the registered cases are getting thrown out, shouldn’t the commission, which registered the cases, review its work?”

Aryal adds this is what happens when political appointees run the CIAA. Chargesheets for a high-profile corruption case are filed with weak evidence and the court cannot establish the crime. This isn’t the case when it comes to petty corruption and fraud cases though. Ever since Thapa and his team joined the Special Court, they have issued convictions only in cases related to fake documents. Not only that, the team seems eager to swiftly settle corruption-related cases. On a single day, June 2, for instance, the court issued acquittals on 17 bribery and corruption cases.

Chairperson of Transparency International Nepal Padmini Pradhananga says political appointment of judges is also the reason why corruption in Nepal is entrenched.

“There are reports of corruption and malpractice in the judiciary, but no one is investigating. Corrupt people will continue to escape punishment so long as judges and justices are seen as above the law,” she says.

A person died while other sustained injuries when a bike they were riding on met with an accident at Gaurigama in Mahottari Rural Municipality-5, Mahottari on Thursday.

The deceased has been identified as Mukesh Mandal (30) of Mahottari Rural Municipality-6. 

Critically injured in the incident, Mandal breathed his last during the course of treatment at the Provincial Hospital in Jaleshwor at around 3 am today. 

Pillion rider Anil Kumar Mandal, who was injured in the incident, is undergoing treatment at the same hospital.

The accident occurred when the rider lost control of the bike (Ja 11 Pa 1723) heading towards Balbat from Madai last night. 

Police said that they are looking into the case.

At least nine people died, and about five are trapped after a car was washed away by the Dhela river in Uttarakhand’s Ramnagar area in Nainital district on Friday morning. One girl has been rescued so far, news agency ANI reported.

The incident occurred after a heavy flow of water was induced by rains early on Friday, Anand Bharan, DIG of Kumaon Range, was quoted as saying.

In Sri Lanka right now, before you've woken up, you're losing. 

Power cuts that run late into the sweltering nights steal hours of sleep as the fans cease; whole families waking up sapped from the months-long trial of shuffling their lives around daily blackouts after the country went bankrupt and essentially ran out of fuel, BBC reported.

There are long days to be lived; work days, errands to be run, daily essentials to be bought at twice the price they had been last month. 

All this, you're starting a little more broken than you were last week.

Once you've had breakfast - eating less than you used to, or perhaps nothing at all - the battle to find transport beckons.

In the cities, fuel queues curl around entire suburbs like gargantuan metal pythons, growing longer and fatter by the day, choking roads and crushing livelihoods. 

Tuk-tuk drivers with their eight-litre tanks are forced to spend days lining up before they can run hires again, for 48 hours perhaps, before they are forced to rejoin the queue, bringing pillows, changes of clothes and water to see them through the ordeal.

For a while, middle- and upper-class folk had brought meal packets and soft drinks for those queuing in their neighbourhoods. 

Lately, the cost of food, of cooking gas, of clothes, transport, and even what electricity the state will allow you to have, has sky-rocketed so egregiously as the rupee's value plummeted, that even largesse from the moneyed has been in short supply, according to BBC.

In working-class neighbourhoods, families have begun to band together around wood fire stoves, to prepare the simplest of meals - rice, and coconut sambol. 

Even dhal, a staple of the diet all over South Asia, has become a luxury. Meat? At three times the price it used to be? Forget it. 

Fresh fish was once abundant and affordable. Now, boats can't go out to sea, because there is no diesel. The fishermen that can go out sell their catch at vastly inflated rates to hotels and restaurants out of reach to most, BBC reported.