The Kathmandu District Court has sentenced Manoj Pandey, the promoter of Model Global Visas Consultancy, to seven years in prison in a human trafficking case.
A court under Judge Deepak Dhakal on Monday sentenced Pandey to seven years in prison and ordered him to pay Rs 75,000 in compensation to the victim, according to Deepak Dahal, district court information officer.
Earlier, on January 24, the district court had found Pandey guilty of child sexual abuse and human trafficking. Judge Deepak Dhakal’s court found Pandey guilty and sentenced him to six months and ordered him to pay compensation of Rs 50,000 to the victim for child sexual abuse.
The court had called another hearing for Monday to announce the amount of the punishment for the human trafficking charge. The court usually holds another hearing to determine the amount of punishment in cases with prison terms of more than three years.
The District Attorney’s Office had sought a prison term of 10 to 15 years against Pandey in the human trafficking case and up to three years in the child sexual abuse case.
Pandey has been accused of drugging and raping a minor during a beauty pageant eight years ago. He was arrested on May 21, 2022 and brought to justice on June 20.
A woman revealed last year through videos on social media that she was raped during the Miss Global International 2014 beauty pageant when she was 16 years old.
The victim claimed that Pandey injected her drinks during a show at a hotel eight years ago. She added that Pandey threatened her the next morning saying that she had nude photos and videos of her taken overnight when she was drunk and that she would post them if she filed a complaint.
She revealed that Pandey continued to blackmail and rape her for six months. Pandey also allegedly brought her friends over and forced them to rape her in front of him during the period.
She stated in the disclosures that she brought some friends of hers to Pandey’s consultancy after six months and told every staff member about her misdeeds by producing the call logs and text messages he had sent her during the intervening period.
