Crime

Former Nepali national cricket team captain Sandeep Lamichhane was arrested upon his arrival at the Tribhuvan International Airport on Thursday. 

As soon as he disembarked from a flight from Doha, a Nepal Police team took the cricketer into custody on charges of raping a minor. The arrest comes nearly a month after a warrant was issued against him.

Hours earlier, Lamichhane had posted a message on social media that he was reaching Kathmandu by a Qatar Airways flight. The plane, however, touched down at the TIA a little later than its scheduled 10 am landing due to bad weather. 

"I will fully cooperate in all stages of investigation and will fight legal battle to prove my innocence. Let the justice prevail," Lamichhane wrote on his Facebook wall, alongside details of his flight. He also wrote that he had requested the Nepal Police to allow his lawyer Saroj Krishna Ghimire to be present during the legal procedures.

Escorted by police personnel, Lamichhane – wearing a grey hooded tracksuit, and a black baseball cap with a black mask around his face – emerged out of the arrival terminal. And a police van whisked him off to the nearby police station in Gaushala, where a minor girl had lodged a complaint on September 6, charging him with rape. 

Two days after the complaint registration, the police obtained a warrant from the Kathmandu District Court for his arrest, leading to his suspension from the national cricket team.

The 22-year-old cricketer, who was in Jamaica to fulfill his contract as a professional player in the Caribbean Premier League, denied the charges levelled against him. But he failed to return to Nepal.

With no response from the cricketer forthcoming two weeks since the court warrant, Interpol, on the recommendation of the Nepali Police, issued a diffusion notice against him.

In her complaint, the 17-year-old girl has charged Lamichhane of raping her multiple times on the night of August 21.

The following day, Lamichhane, the national team captain at the time, left Kathmandu to play a bilateral cricket series in Kenya. From there, he headed to the West Indies to play T20 professional cricket.

Lamichhane has been a poster boy for the rise of cricket in Nepal, who gained one-day international status from the game's world governing body in 2018.

The leg spinner shot to fame when the Delhi Capitals roped him in for the lucrative Indian Premier League in 2018.