The Nepali media baron, Kailash Sirohiya, found himself behind bars for what the media fraternity describes as 'continuous exposés against Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane's alleged involvement in cooperative fraud.' Nepal's most circulated broadsheet, Kantipur, relentlessly followed the story after it became known that the Home Minister had availed credit illegally from some saving and credit cooperatives based in Kathmandu, Chitwan and Pokhara to fund a TV channel and other associated businesses before he stepped into politics nearly two years ago. Lamichhane leveraged his office's authority to imprison the paper's publisher, Kailash Sirohiya, coercing state agencies to detain him.

On May 21, Nepal Police arrested Sirohiya, the chairperson of Kantipur Media Group, from his office premises in Thapathali for investigation on citizenship-related offences. Although the case is now with the Dhanusha District Court, it is evident that Sirohiya's citizenship issue, apparently just a clerical error, has been exploited to deflect attention from Lamichhane's own hidden issues. Sirohiya has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and has accused the Home Minister of seeking revenge for publishing news stories about his alleged financial irregularities. "It is undeniably an act of vendetta as I am being arrested based on an anonymous complaint at the behest of the Home Minister, who himself faces charges of possessing two passports," Sirohiya said. Sirohiya was released on May 29 on the condition that he appears before the police when summoned.