Killers roam free in Nepal
By Sudeshna Sarkar
KOLKATA - When police this month finally arrested a man in Kathmandu, capital of Nepal, for the murder of a teenager nine years ago, their belated action may have saved the lives of Nanda Prasad Adhikari and his wife Ganga Maya.
The 18-year-old murder victim, abducted and killed brutally by Maoist guerrillas in 2004 when the communist insurgency was at its peak, was their son. Driven by anger and frustration that the killers had not been punished even seven years after the insurrection ended, the couple had been on a fast unto death in Kathmandu, and had to be admitted to hospital.
The arrest, along with an assurance by the interim government that the killing would be investigated and the victim's family paid
compensation, led the Adhikaris to end their fast after 47 days.
But Subodh Pyakurel, head of Nepal's largest human rights organization, Informal Sector Service Centre (INSEC), has misgivings about the state's promise.
"The era of royal regimes has not ended," Pyakurel told IPS, referring to the two years from 2005 when Nepal's ambitious king Gyanendra discarded his figurehead role to grab power in an army-backed putsch.
The following two years saw some of the worst human right violations by both the army and the guerrillas and an escalation in killings, abductions and disappearances. Despite the subsequent abolition of monarchy, there is a general feeling that the succeeding elected governments were as dictatorial as the royal regime.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/SOU-01-200913.html
