Thursday, December 14, 2006 - 04:56 PM
By Cindy Morley
cindy@fayettedailynews.com Everytime Magistrate Judge Joe Tinsley asked Govinda Bahadur Basnet a question, the suspect in Peachtree City's latest computer porn case broke down and cried.
The crying was so loud at times during Thursday's bond hearing that Basnet would bend over in his chair, and Tinsley had to order him to sit up in the chair.
Basnet, 41, a doctoral student from Nepal, who is doing research at the University of Georgia, was arrested Wednesday afternoon at his residence in Athens for trying to entice who he believed to be a 15-year-old girl for sex over the Internet.
Thursday afternoon, Tinsley denied bond for Basnet on the grounds of lack of employment and lack of ties to the United States.
District Attorney Scott Ballard urged the court to deny bond, stating that Basnet has been dismissed from his work at UGA following his arrest.
"It's our understanding that his only income is the assistance he receives from Georgia, and he lives in the married housing at the university," said ballard.
"We don't believe he will have a place to live if he is released on bond.
"We have quite a strong case against him and we are concerned that we won't get him back if you release him."
According to Peachtree City Police Chief Jim Murray, Basnet lived with his wife of five years and two-year-old son in the married housing. The son was at home with Basnet at the time of his arrest, Murray said.
Both the wife, child and a cousin of the wife's were in court with Basnet Thursday.
According to Murray, Basnet engaged in conversations of a sexual nature and sent explicit pictures to an undercover Peachtree City police officer. He had also planned to meet with the undercover officer in Peachtree City, Murray said.
"He was planning to set up a meeting with the undercover officer 'as soon as he could sneak away' but as soon as we learned he was the father of a two-year-old and was living in the married residences at Georgia with a number of young children around him, we felt we had to go get him," said Murray.
"We felt it was too urgent. We couldn't wait on him to come here."
The University of Georgia Police assisted in the arrest, Murray said.
Murray said Basnet was in the United States on a student visa.
In broken English, Basnet told the court Thursday he had been living in Athens for four months, and was paid a stipend from the university. He said that was his only income and that his wife was not employed.
Basnet also said he had been in Athens four years before when he received his graduate degree.
This is the third arrest for Computer Pornography and Child Exploitation by Peachtree City Police involving a student in the United States on a Visa -- one was from Mexico, one from India and Basnet from Nepal.
According to Murray, police seized Basnet's computer under a search warrant signed by a Clarke County Magistrate. It will now be sent to the GBI crime lab.
According to information on the University of Georgia research website, Basnet was born in Solukhumbu, Nepal, and is currently doing PhD work in ecological and environmental anthropology at the University of Georgia.
He lists his interests as "mountain issues, development anthropology, and water resources."
He also writes on the website, " I am planning on doing my dissertation on how the struggle for water rights in water scarce region modifies the institutional landscape of agricultural resource management in upper Mustang, Nepal.
"Before joining the PhD program, I completed my Masters degree in ecological agriculture from the Wageningen Agricultural University, Holland, and B. Sc. (Ag.) from Andhra Pradesh Agricultural University, India. As a part of Masters degree, I studied influence of agricultural labor availability on hill/mountain farming systems in two hilly districts of Nepal for my thesis."
Basnet says he spent most of my professional career working in the field of conservation and development, for two years from 1998 with the UNDP in Royal Chitwan National Park and Rara National Park, Nepal as Bufferzone Development Officer.
The website states that in early 1990s, Basnet taught plant pathology for two years at the Institute of Agriculture and Animal Sciences, Chitwan, Nepal.
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