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On April 22, a joint team from the Department of Immigration and Nepal Police raided a house in Maharajgunj, Kathmandu, and arrested 22 Chinese nationals. Strangely, at the time this news was largely ignored by Nepal’s major news outlets and details about the incident remain obscure to this day.

ApEx learns that authorities had been tipped about suspicious activities in the house and the suspects had been caught with 35 laptops, 675 mobile phones, and 760 SIM cards issued by Nepal Telecom and NCell.

The Chinese nationals are suspected to be part of a syndicate involved in cross-border online betting. However, neither the immigration agency nor the police have the right technology and manpower to confirm their suspicion.

With no firm ground to charge the suspects, all 22 were released a day later on the condition of helping the authorities with investigation. The immigration department has confiscated their passports to prevent them from leaving the country.

The suspects, who were released under the custody of one Manjil Shrestha, are currently staying at a hotel in Thamel.

Narayan Prasad Bhattarai, director-general at the Department of Immigration, says investigation is being pursued with the assistance of police.

“The suspects had entered Nepal on business visas. We also found that one of them had overstayed his visa,” Bhattarai says. “We are still trying to find out the nature of their activities here in Nepal.”

The laptops and mobile phones seized from the Chinese nationals have been sent to the Central Police Forensic Science Laboratory. The digital forensic report of these devices will be crucial in investigation.

Increasing involvement of Chinese nationals in illegal activities has become a serious cause for concern for the authorities in Nepal. Among other things, they are suspected of running Ponzi schemes online and scamming foreign nationals with lures of easy loans. The immigration department is responsible for investigating crimes perpetrated by foreigners. But the department has been unable to fulfill this responsibility due to manpower crunch. While it has shown some willingness to investigate foreign citizens involved in suspicious acts, its investigations seldom conclude satisfactorily.

Even the police seem to lack expertise in effectively investigating foreigner’s suspicious illegal activities. And when it comes to crimes committed through the misuse of technology, they are woefully incompetent. 

This was evident when the authorities arrested 122 Chinese nationals, also with similar equipment, in December 2019 for their alleged involvement in criminal activities. These arrests were made with the aid of the Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu, which was worried that the suspects were tarnishing China’s image.

They were eventually extradited to China. The Ministry of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China had chartered two planes to take them back. A senior official of China’s Criminal Investigation Department had himself come to Kathmandu to negotiate the extradition with Nepali authorities.

The decision of Nepali authorities on the latest group of 22 Chinese nationals arrested in Kathmandu is unknown. They seem to be struggling to figure out what kind of activities the suspects were into. Investigation and evidence-study thus far have offered little clue. (The Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu didn’t respond to our queries on the arrested Chinese nationals.) 

What police know so far is that the suspects conducted their businesses and transactions using various apps with their servers in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. The problem is, these transaction records cannot be accessed to know the extent of their daily dealings.

Nevertheless, police and immigration department officials insist the investigation is still in progress with what little technical resources they have at their disposal.

Police have also been using translators to interrogate the suspects.

Meanwhile, the immigration agency has decided to deport and impose a yearlong travel ban on one of the suspects who was found overstaying his visa.

Bhattarai, the director-general at the Department of Immigration, confirmed the decision taken by a secretary-level meeting of the Ministry of Home Affairs to deport and ban one Liancheng Wang with passport number E64817354 (see photo, alongside).

“It will take some time to deport him since Nepal-China flights are suspended at the moment,” says Bhattarai. “As per the decision of the Home Ministry, he will be banned from traveling to Nepal for a year.” 

A building collapse one week ago in central China killed 53 people, state media reported Friday as the search of the large pile of debris ended after rescuers found 10 survivors, Associated Press reported.

Authorities said at a news conference that all the missing had been accounted for as of 3 a.m., state broadcaster CCTV said in an online post.

The residential and commercial building in the city of Changsha suddenly collapsed the afternoon of April 29. Aerial photos showed it pancaked to about the second story between other buildings about six stories tall. At least nine people have been arrested on suspicion of ignoring building codes or committing other violations.

Survivors were pulled out of the rubble over several days. The 10th and last one was pulled out shortly after midnight on Thursday, 5 ½ days after the collapse. All of the survivors were reportedly in good condition after being treated in a hospital, according to the Associated Press.

The arrested include the building owner, three people in charge of design and construction and five others who allegedly gave a false safety assessment for a guest house on the building's fourth to sixth floors. The building also had residences, a café and a restaurant.

Rescuers used search dogs, hand tools, drones and electronic life detectors.

In an account of Monday's rescue of the eighth survivor, state media said rescuers faced an unstable pile of rubble that they had to work around rather than demolish. Prior to the rescue, they were able to feed in video equipment to communicate with the girl and establish that one of her legs was trapped. They also fed in saline solution for her to drink.

An increase in the number of collapses of self-built buildings in recent years prompted Chinese President Xi Jinping to call for additional checks to uncover structural weaknesses.

Poor adherence to safety standards, including the illegal addition of extra floors and failure to use reinforcing iron bars, is often blamed for such disasters. Decaying infrastructure such as gas pipes has also led to explosions and collapses, Associated Press reported.

A storm system spawned several tornadoes that whipped through areas of Texas and Oklahoma, causing damage to a school, a marijuana farm and other structures, Associated Press reported.

There were no reports of serious injuries following the Wednesday night tornadoes, but the system caused flooding in parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas, and more stormy weather took place Thursday.

Significant damage was reported in the Oklahoma city of Seminole, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) southeast of Oklahoma City, where Gov. Kevin Stitt said damage assessments were underway after he toured the area Thursday. 

“(We’re) getting all the resources and supplies that the city wants and needs,” including generators, Stitt said. “Thank the Lord that nobody was hurt” and no deaths have been reported.

The National Weather Service said it found damage in Seminole from an EF2 tornado, which has winds speeds of up to 135 mph (217 kph), according to the Associated Press.

More than 2,900 customers remained without power in Seminole late Thursday afternoon, according to Oklahoma Gas & Electric, more than 63% of the utility customers in the city.

The Academy of Seminole took a direct hit but no one was injured, the school said on Facebook.

Video footage from Oklahoma TV station KOCO showed a tornado hit a marijuana farm in the nearby town of Maud.

Several roads and highways were closed Thursday morning in parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas because of flash flooding.

In Bixby, Oklahoma, located south of Tulsa, officials opened a temporary shelter at a church after thunderstorms flooded some homes and streets in one neighborhood. 

In East Texas, a tornado on Thursday damaged several campers and buildings at an RV park in Rusk County, Sheriff Johnwayne Valdez told KTRE-TV. The Rusk County Office of Emergency Management reported one person was injured after being hit by a tree, Associated Press reported.

On Wednesday, a “large and dangerous tornado” was spotted in the rural community of Lockett, about 170 miles (275 kilometers) northwest of Dallas, said the National Weather Service office in Norman, Oklahoma.

The weather service said it found damage near Lockett from an EF3 tornado, which has winds speeds of up to 165 mph (265 kph). 

There were no significant injuries or deaths to residents in Wilbarger County, where Lockett is located, Sheriff Brian Fritze told KAUZ-TV. He said several homes and barns appeared to sustain extensive damage, according to the Associated Press.

Heavy rain and flooding has killed 22 people, destroyed hundreds of homes and damaged crops in Afghanistan, which is already facing a humanitarian crisis, a disaster management official said on Thursday, Reuters reported.

The Taliban government, struggling to cope with the disaster that has affected more than a third of its provinces, will approach international relief organisations for help, officials said.

"Due to flooding and storms in 12 provinces, 22 people have died and 40 injured," said Hassibullah Shekhani, head of communications and information at Afghanistan's National Disaster Management Authority.

The rain and flooding was particularly severe in the western provinces of Badghis and Faryab and the northern province of Baghlan, according to Reuters.

Afghanistan has been suffering from drought in recent years, made worse by climate change, with low crop yields raising fears of serious food shortages.The weather has exacerbated problems of poverty caused by decades of war and then a drop in foreign aid and the freezing of assets abroad after the Taliban took over, and US-led forces withdrew, in August.

Shekhani said 500 houses were destroyed, 2,000 damaged, 300 head of livestock killed and some 3,000 acres of crops damaged.

He said the International Committee of the Red Cross was helping and officials would approach other international organisations for help.

The international community is grappling with how to help the country of some 40 million people without benefiting the Taliban, Reuters reported.