The Hattigaunda area of Budhanilkanth Municipality is normally busy during the evening. But things were different on Tuesday as a team of officers from the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) were carrying out an operation in the area.
It was past dusk and an in-disguise officer from the CIB knocked on the door of a luxurious bungalow in the Hattigauda area. A woman came up and told the officer there was no one in the home and asked him to return later. The officer did not budge and tried to force entry. The woman, however, was not going to let that happen.
While that happened, a person inside the house was trying to escape. Realising the person trying to escape was Ram Bahadur Bomjan, known by his self-proclaimed title of Little Budda, they quickly shifted their approach and looked to arrest him.
“We were told he was there a few weeks ago. We wanted to verify it and decided to go look,” said CIB’s director Kiran Bajracharya.
The CIB team knew Ram Bahadur Bomjan was in the house after what transpired at the gate. The team had surrounded the house and were on the lookout for the controversial ascetic. They found him too, trying to jump out from the fourth floor of the house.
“He jumped out to the second floor with a piece of bread in hand. He was trying to get away but we had him surrounded,” said an officer part of the CIB that raided Bomjam’s home.
As soon as he was caught, CIB officers said he pretended to be ignorant of the outside world. He even told the CIB he had not run away and was meditating somewhere.
“He told us he is a monk and that he lives in the jungle. He even said he was unaware of the arrest warrant issued against him,” said the officer.
While one CIB team transported Ram Bahadur Bomjan to its headquarters in Maharajgunj, another initiated a search of the house. On the third floor, they came across a room labelled as the bunker room. Inside, they discovered drawers and a safe containing large sums of money.
“We found over Rs 33 million. He had bundles of Nepali money and foreign currencies too,” said SSP Dinesh Acharya. “We also found 14 smartphones and five tablets.”
Acharya said there was so much cash, it took two people to carry it out. Counting it took a long time too as he says they finished counting all the money at 2 am.
The rich monk
Ram Bahadur Bomjan, who claimed to be a monk who lived in the forest, had a gymnasium and a boxing hall on the fourth floor of the house where he lived. According to experts, Bomjan himself is also a black belt in karate.
“On the outside, he preaches that he is a monk, but inside, he is living a luxurious life under the same guise,” says an officer assigned to the operation. “If a normal person went to this house, they would think the king lived here.”
According to the CIB, most items found inside the house were imported. The bathrooms were decorated with shiny tiles, reminiscent of a five-star hotel. It was evident that Bomjan had a strong inclination towards expensive things. This was highlighted by his purchase of a Land Cruiser valued at nearly Rs 50 million. CIB said he had already made an advanced payment of Rs 30 million to buy the luxury SUV.
“That’s not it, we also found a Crossfire motorbike and a KTM Duke 390 in his possession,” said SP Nawaraj Aryal.
Accused of rape
But why was Ram Bahadur Bomjan, who was hailed as Little Buddha arrested like a criminal?
The chain of events began on September 15, 2018, when a girl came forward, revealing that Bomjam had tried to rape her. Holding a press conference she said how he tried to rape her in his Sindupalchowk ashram in August 2016. When she tried to complain, she was asked to stay quiet by his followers.
However, a few months later, when the case gained public attention, the girl, lodged a complaint at the District Police Office in Sarlahi. Subsequently, the police initiated a search for Bomjan in 2019, armed with an arrest warrant.
“I tried to tell people but I was told not to go out as it would defame Bomjam and the Buddhist religion,” she said during the press conference.
However, she said that she left the ashram around July 2018 as she did not feel comfortable staying in the ashram due to Bomjan’s behaviour towards her. Claiming she was trying to defame their guru, Bomjan’s followers entered the press conference and claimed she was lying.
Currently, a child sexual abuse case against Ram Bahadur Bomjan, which has been initiated based on her complaint, is pending in the District Court, Sarlahi. He had been summoned to court but had not presented himself until the police took him there on Thursday.
No proof of murder
There is also a murder charge against Ram Bahadur Bomjan. Relatives of Sancha Lal Waiba claim she was murdered by Bomjam as she has been missing since March 15, 2015.
Based on the complaint, a joint team of the District Police Office, Sindhupalchok and CIB raided his ashram in January 2019.
They even dug up places where they thought he had buried her but they found nothing besides empty salt packets.
“We did not find even small traces of a human body,” said an investigating officer.
According to the officials of the bureau, it is suspected that the body may have been removed after the information about the complaint was leaked.
“They are very smart.”
Another woman, Rita Bot has also been missing after being associated with Bomjan. She went to the Gadhimai fair with Bomjam and has been missing ever since. It is suspected that she may have been murdered. However, no evidence has been found.
At that time, the followers who were staying there had given a statement saying that a large amount of ghee kept in the ashram at Sindhuli disappeared.
“We also investigated from the point of view of whether the body was burnt, although it was difficult to find out”, says another officer involved in the investigation.
Interestingly, around the same time, a large quantity of ghee went missing from the Sindhuli ashram. This has many believing that Bot was cremated after the murder.
“We have no proof,” said the investigating officer.
On June 17, 2020, a team led by then CIB SP Bel Bahadur Pandey raided Bomjan’s ashram in Sindhuli.
After all proof pointed at Bomjam being at the ashram, when the police reached there, he was nowhere to be found. They had gone there with sniffer dogs and a life detector machine but they did not find anything.
They looked for Bomjam for eight hours but he was nowhere to be found.
The missing people
On December 27, 2018, a complaint was also lodged against Ram Bahadur Bomjan at the District Police Office, Bara after some of his followers disappeared.
According to the family members, three years before the complaint was lodged, Bomjan’s confidant Jas Bahadur Waiba took 34-year-old Suresh Kumar Ale Magar of Jitpur Simra Sub-Metropolitan City-18 to his ashram.
The people of Bomjan’s ashram told Magar’s family that he had gone abroad. However, no one knows where he is as he has not come in contact.
Chinimaya Tamang of Nuwakot and Phulmaya Rumba aka Dolmo of Makwanpur are also missing from the ashram in Sindhupalchok. So far, the police have not been able to get any information about them either.
Officials believe that information about them can be obtained from Bomjan. However, due to the obligation to produce him in District Court Sarlahi and other reasons, that also seems difficult.
What is not helping investigations is Bomjan’s followers who are calling this arrest a means of inciting religious violence and an attack against Buddhism. This means, there is a chance this investigation will not go through as wished by the CIB.
