A day after a district attorney’s office filed case against 13 Maoist cadre for a 2004 murder, the UCPN (Maoist) on Monday boycotted a scheduled three-party meeting in protest and warned of further protests.
The meeting between the Nepali Congress, the CPN-UML and the UCPN (Maoist) was scheduled at the Prime Minister’s official residence. The Maoist leaders came to the venue and after expressing their protest and warning, left the place. The Maoist leaders also threatened not to show up in any meeting with political parties unless the cases were withdrawn.
On Sunday, the Chitwan district attorney demanded imprisonment and confiscation of property against 11 named in FIR for the murder of Krishna Prasad Adhikari, then 18, of Phujel in Gorkha district. The district attorney’s office sought similar punishment against two others, one of them aide of former Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai’s wife Hisila Yami. The cases were filed as per the Supreme Court directive which had ruled that there was no bar in filing such cases.
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Two of the accused have been arrested and the rest have been named as absconding.
The parents of Adhikari who had been on indefinite hunger strike since October 7 last year were taken to ICU of Bir Hospital on Friday since their condition had further worsened. They have been on indefinite fast and were being forced fed liquid food.
Meanwhile, welcoming the government’s decision to files cases despite pressure from the UCPN (Maoist), 13 civil society activists issued a statement, urging Nandra Prasad Adhikari and Ganga Maya Adhikari to end their fast.
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“(The trial) sends a strong message to those who seek to promote impunity in society, and helps clarify the matter that criminal cases from the 10-year conflict period cannot be given a political colour and made subject to amnesty,” the statement said.
According to accounts registered with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), teenager Adhikari had gone to meet his grandparents in Chitwan in June 2004. Details of the FIR, NHRC and other human rights bodies point to alleged involvement of Maoist cadre in the crime.
The family of Krishna Prasad believes that he was murdered in relation to a longstanding land dispute in Phujel.
The UCPN (Maoist) has maintained that conflict-era cases could not be prosecuted under existing criminal laws and that only transitional justice mechanism could take up such cases.