BIKRAM RAI
Less than a week after assuring Nepal-based envoys that he was going to ensure the Truth and Reconciliation Bill reflected international norms, the Bhattarai government on Wednesday at midnight sent police to detain policemen in Dailekh involved in the investigation of a journalist’s murder in 2003.
The case of Dekendra Thapa, the Dailekh reporter who was tortured and killed by the Maoists during the war, has become emblematic of the state of impunity in the country. It also reflects the determination of the Maoists in government not to dig up wartime atrocities by their cadre and by the army and police.
The irony of the midnight action in Dailekh was that district police chief Sharada Prasad Chaudhary, and Inspectors Indra Subedi and Kiran Neupane were held by a police unit sent from Surkhet and Nepalganj and accompanied by truckloads of about 600 Maoist YCL. All three were transferred on Thursday afternoon for failing to maintain ‘peace’.
Dailekh has been tense this week as the Maoists staged their District Convention, and the opposition parties tried to prevent Prime Minister Bhattarai on Wednesday from attending to protest his attempts to stop the investigation into the Dekendra case.
Among the police team investigating the case, only Inspector Binod Sharma is still in his job.