Maoists throw out Indians of Nepal hotel
[ 14 Oct, 2006 1529hrs ISTIANS ]
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KATHMANDU: While Nepal's government is wooing the Indian visitor to stabilise the kingdom's fluctuating tourism sector, a group of Indian tourists say they returned home with a bitter experience after being thrown out of their hotel by Maoist guerrillas.
According to Vinita Sharma, a member of the Indian group, they were staying at a hotel in the Lakeside area of Pokhara city, a sunny, popular tourist destination in western Nepal that is being promoted as an alternative to India's beach capital Goa, when the incident occurred earlier this month.
The tourists were alarmed by a commotion in the night when a group of young men barged inside the hotel and began threatening the hotel manager.
"I could not understand what they were saying until I, along with the other guests, were asked to vacate our rooms for the new arrivals," Sharma said.
"I later came to know that they were Maoist cadres who wanted to stay in the hotel for free."
Sharma wrote about the group's plight to a local daily, the Himalayan Times , which published it on Thursday, the day the Maoists were holding a key round of negotiations with the government at Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala's residence in the Capital.
"Are the Maoists a political party or a terror outfit?" Sharma asked in her letter. "In India, only people of the underworld or terrorists behave like this. I really feel sorry for the Nepali business community."
The publication of Sharma's letter coincided with another local daily, the Kathmandu Post , reporting how three French nationals, who had gone to remote Dolakha district in northern Nepal, to help build a truss bridge for the villagers, were extorted by a group of Maoists.
source;
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2171436.cms
