Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa has assured that those involved in rape and murder of 13-year-old Nirmala Panta of Kanchanpur will soon be brought to book.
Responding to the questions raised by members of the National Assembly on Friday, he stated that the government is investigating the incident seriously. He claimed that he never declared Dilip Singh Bista, who was earlier arrested by the police as the main accused, guilty.
He revealed that the high level probe committee formed by the government on August 23 is investigating about the persons involved in the incident and those who were negligent in investigation.
He also pointed post-mortem report showed that Ram Manohar Yadav of Banke, the cadre of CK Raut, died of illness and not injuries.
Yadav, who was under detention of Bardiya Police, died on August 31 while being taken to Kathmandu for treatment.
The police said that Yadav died of heart problems arising due to high blood pressure despite immediately being taken to the hospital after he was found unconscious in the police cell. Spokesperson of CK Raut Abdul Khan, however, accused the police negligence in the death of Yadav.
Police had detained Yadav from a program organized by District Coordination Committee, Bardiya on August 23 in which Deputy Prime Minister Upendra Yadav was also present. The cadres of Raut along with Yadav showed black flags to DPM Upendra Yadav.
Home Minister Thapa conceded that there were some lapses while taking editor-in-chief of Khojtalas weekly and khojtalas.com in custody. "There are reservations that a journalist was handcuffed. We have asked the police why they did so and also instructed them to not repeat that in the coming days," Minister Thapa said.
Editor-in-Chief of Khojtalas weekly and
khojtalasnews.com Raju Basnet was arrested by the Metropolitan Police Range Lalitpur from his home in Thencho, Lalitpur Monday morning over a piece about pressure by lawmakers to illegally sell land of Harisiddhi Brick and Tile Factory.
Drishti weekly had published a piece titled '
Lawmakers put pressure to illegally sell land of Harisiddhi' about lawmakers including Pampha Bhusal of Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) putting pressure to illegally sell the land of Harisiddhi Brick and Tile Factory on September 4. Khojtalas had republished the piece changing the headline to '
People's representatives or land brokers?' two days later.
The police arrested journalist Basnet, and took him away in handcuffs, after one Sushil Khanal--advocate of lawmaker Bhusal, according to Basnet's wife Ramita-- moved a cyber crime case in the Kathmandu District Court against Khojtalas claiming the news defamed him.
