March 5: Durga Prasai of Jhapa is currently in the limelight for campaigning against the banking and financial institutions.

"If the representatives of microfinance and financial institutions come to the villages, catch them and smear black soot on them. If you enter a bank for vengeance because a bank employee has tortured you, you will face a robbery case, but you can wait for them outside the bank and smear black soot,” said Prasai. His extreme view is spreading on social media like a wildfire.

He is also inciting people to not pay their bank loans.

At the meantime, Prasai’s act of calling and harassing the banks’ top level employees is also going viral on social media networks. People related with the financial sector have demanded that the state should create a working environment as they feel uncomfortable with Prasai's expressions and activities.

After Prasai's statement, the Ministry of Home Affairs has sent letters to the chiefs of all district administration offices and instructed them to keep the security agencies on high alert. Home Ministry officials say that no person should be allowed to spread rumors or raise slogans in such a way so as to disturb the peace, harmony (ethnic and communal) and cause riots.

After all, who is Prasai who keeps coming into the limelight such tantrums and controversial statements? It has become a subject of curiosity everywhere.

Prasai, a permanent resident of Birtamod, Jhapa, is best known as the director of B&C Medical College. Those who know him closely say that Prasai has invested in areas beyond medical colleges.

Prasai's family, which settled in the plains of Jhapa from Tehrathum in the hills of eastern Nepal, was of a humble economic background. He earned his living by farming. Prasai has not studied past the eighth grade. He got married at a young age. He worked in Prasai Grill Factory for some time and went to Europe for employment. Unable to stay for a long time in Europe, he returned to his country. With the experience of working in buffalo farms abroad, Prasai started raising buffaloes professionally in Birtamod.

Locals say that Prasai started the farm by buying advanced breed of buffaloes from Haryana, India. At that time, Prasai had about a hundred buffaloes. Prasai sold milk as well as buffaloes. The milk produced in his farm used to reach as far as India across the Mechi River. His buffalo farm, which he started with bank loan, went well for some time, but financial crisis started appearing later. Prasai struggled to pay the bank loan and interest in regular interval. When he went to the bank to ask for more loans, the bank did not believe him. Finally Prasai's buffalo business crumbled.

It is said that Prasai, who was initially affiliated to the Nepali Congress, joined the then rebels CPN Maoists, which was an underground outfit at that time, after the collapse of his business. Those who know him say that Prasai used Maoist cadres against his father-in-law to help his brother-in-law who was fighting a case for family property. Due to the Maoist threat, Prasai’s father-in-law was ready to give a share in the case that had not been settled in the court for a long time and Prasai's brother-in-law got his share of land.

Locals say that Prasai's fortunes brightened after getting the land. Experts say that he made a lot of money after plotting the land together with his brother-in-law and selling it for up to Ra 500,000 per dhur. After making a good fortune, Prasai started dealing in land in Kathmandu. He built a luxurious house in Bhaktapur.

It was the same house where he raised quite a few eyebrows by serving red rice to the then chairmen of Communist Party of Nepal KP Sharma Olin d Pushpa Kamal Dahal.

It is said that he is involved in many businesses besides the B&C Medical College. Prasai, who joined the CPN (UML) after the dissolution of the CPN, was given the responsibility of central member by the UML leadership.

After that, he started criticizing the Maoist Chairman Dahal, and said that he would encourage 500,00 people join the UML before the elections. Although he tried to run a medical college, he has not been able to get a medical college license due to the agitation of Dr Govind KC, a medical crusader who has been demanding reforms in the medical sector.

Prasai was also in the limelight when he brought the prince of the United Arab Emirates on a visit to Nepal and received a golden stick as a gift from him.

On February 1, Prasai announced that he had started a campaign from Mechipul for the restoration of the monarchy, with members of the former royal family as witnesses. Prasai, who criticized the banks and financial institutions in that program, repeated the same issue and context in a program held in Kathmandu on Saturday.

Prasai is viewed with suspicion due to the wealth he has acquired in a short period of time as well as his relationship with the UAE prince. Although he has been abusing banks and financial institutions, he has taken loans from the same financial institutions for his business. Although some people think that it is difficult for him to pay the bank loan, he claims that he is paying the loan interest as per the schedule.