KATHMANDU, April 2: Asgar Ali, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s information technology consultant, is once again embroiled in controversy after his software company removed a news item by hacking the backend of Kathmandupress.com, a Kathmandu-based online news portal.

The private software firm run by Ali and his business partner Biswas Dhakal has been accused of secretly removing the news content by hacking into Kathmandupress.com.

Republica earlier reported that Biswas Dhakal, president of F1Soft International Pvt. Ltd., and Asgar Ali, founder and director of F1 Soft International, pressured Ujjwal Maharjan, CEO of Shiran Technologies Pvt. Ltd., to illegally remote the story from Kathmandupress.com’s website.

Shiran has been working as the designer and developer of the news portal. F1 Soft International owns a number of companies, including eSewa and Shiran Technologies.

However, this is not the first time Ali has been dragged into controversy since his appointment to the post of IT advisor to PM Oli in the first half of 2018. Ali is also one of the founders of eSewa Fonepay Private Limited.

In October 2018, he was accused of abusing his position to get hold of people’s private and sensitive information for commercial use.

Likewise, in December of the same year, he was found to be grossly misusing his position to secure major IT contracts at different government bodies without a competitive bidding process.

However, the Prime Minister and his team remained silent on the controversies surfaced over the IT expert.

Ali was re-appointed to the post in November 2019 despite several accusations against him.