Where da fawk is political accountability???
When u r one of the head of these terrorist political party, you should on some point learn to accept your wrong doings...
PREM DHAKAL
KATHMANDU, Sept 22: She has endured the pain of her younger brother being killed by the Maoists during the insurgency. And for lodging a complaint against that killing, her elder brother was also murdered four years later.
The elder brother´s daughter had ironically led the assailants to her father and the guilt-ridden girl committed suicide four years ago.
Her whole family had to leave their ancestral home in Ramechhap district and property in Okhaldhunga, while Bal Krishna Dhungel, who was convicted by Okhaldhunga District Court for murdering the younger brother, climbed the rungs of the Maoist party and won the Constituent Assembly (CA) elections from Okhaldhunga-2.
The Supreme Court has reinstated the district court verdict after Rajbiraj Appellate Court gave Dhungel a clean chit, but he walks a free man.
Sabitri Shrestha, 46, has seen it all and perhaps has nothing more to fear. Her whole family fears that another one of them may meet the fate of the two brothers, but Sabitri keeps on leading the crusade for justice.
“My husband says his Maoist friends in Kavre have warned me to be careful and my lawyers quit the case after Dhungel threatened them over the phone following the Supreme Court verdict. But I don´t have any fear. They can do nothing more than kill me,” she says with bravado.
After seeing the Supreme Court verdict going unimplemented, she is now taking CA Member Dhungel to the Human Rights Committee (HRC) of the United Nations for the murder of younger brother Ujjan Kumar Shrestha, who was shot dead by the Maoists in Tarkerabari-7, Okhaldhunga on June 24, 1998, purportedly for espionage against the Maoist party.
"I would even fight the case against the murder of my elder brother if the police provide me the complaint document filed with them," she adds with determination.
Sabitra Shrestha
Police never registered a court case against the murder of elder brother Ganesh Kumar Shrestha and Ramechhap police refused to give the complaint document filed back then by another elder brother, Raj Kumar, according to Sabitri.
Sabitri´s account of triple tragedy in family
My elder brother Ganesh Kumar Shrestha and younger brother Ujjan lived in Tarkerabari of Okhaldhunga where our family had a rice mill and a grocery and clothing store although Sanghutaar in Ramechhap district across the Koshi river is our ancestral home.
Ujjan, who was already married to a [Disallowed String for - castist reference] girl, had fallen in love with and married one Renuka Poudel some eight months before the incident. The Poudels were not happy with the marriage to a lower caste. Bal Krishna Dhungel´s elder sister had married into the Poudel family.
Dhungel and fellow Maoist leader Puskar Gautam had also accused my brother Ujjan of helping the police arrest them for cow-slaughter and arson. They had threatened to kill Ujjan like a sacrificial lamb amidst the villagers.
Parents
Dhungel, Gautam, the Poudel brothers and some others were waiting for my brother on his way to Dhobidada bazaar for shopping on that fateful day. Dhungel suddenly shot at my brother´s head from above an irrigation canal at Badahare River and they threw the body into the Likhu river. We never recovered the body.
My brother Ganesh lodged a complaint against Dhungel and others with Okhaldhunga police. The Maoists later pasted a letter at our house in Okhaldhunga warning Ganesh dai (elder brother) of a similar fate. He came to Kathmandu, leaving his wife and daughters back in Ramechhap.
Dhungel had publicly threatened to finish off Ganesh dai for lodging the complaint, after he fled to Kathmandu. Ganesh dai stayed in Kathmandu for around four years and returned to Ramechhap after the Dashain of 2002. His wife, who had meanwhile joined him in Kathmandu, stayed back in the capital for treatment, along with their youngest daughter.
Dhungel was in police custody when Ganesh dai returned home. But his comrades killed my brother immediately after he returned. A group of six reached our ancestral home in Sanghutaar in the evening on October 23, 2002 and asked for Ganesh dai.
Ganesh dai´s daughter Rachana showed them the fields where her father was collecting husked paddy. They shot him dead just 15-20 minutes later. The Maoists didn´t allow anyone to collect the body and it remained in the field for five days. Sympathetic villagers took it away on the fifth day and kept it immersed in water for two days.
We requested police to help us with the cremation but they were too scared. The villagers finally agreed to help us and we even prepared a funeral pyre. But the Maoists came and threatened everybody not to light the pyre. The villagers went back and we had to bury the body near our land. On the advice of priests, Rachana herself put fire to the mouth of the deceased to complete the ritual even though the body was not cremated.
Everybody left the village and came to Kathmandu after that. Rachana could never get over the fact that she had led the murderers to her father and would always weep over it. She ultimately committed suicide four years ago, blaming herself for all the misery befalling the family.
I am pained to see the murderer of my brother continuing as a CA Member despite being convicted by the apex court. We feel like foreigners in our own country. We don´t know what type of constitution a convicted murderer will help frame. The CA has to represent people from all walks of life and may be Dhungel is representing the murderers.
Justice denied despite being delivered by court
Okhaldhunga District Court had sentenced Dhungel to life imprisonment along with confiscation of all property for the murder of Ujjan, also known as Bhuwan, on May 10, 2004. The Appellate Court Rajbiraj overruled the verdict and acquitted Dhungel on June 25, 2006. The Supreme Court upheld the district court verdict on January 3, 2010.
“In view of all this, whereas it has been established from the testimonies of eyewitnesses that Bal Krishna Dhungel had shot Bhuwan and that he along with others had dragged the deceased and disposed of the body in the Likhu River, the verdict of the Appellate Court Rajbiraj overturning the first verdict that sentenced defendant Bal Krishna to life in prison with property confiscation as saught in the chargesheet, and clearing him of the charge, is found to be faulty/erroneous,” the apex court had reasoned in its verdict.
But Dhungel has not been arrested and is regularly attending the CA. Sabitri also moved the apex court around three months ago, seeking implementation of the verdict.
Conspiracy against peace and constitution: Dhungel
CA Member Dhungel called the internationalization of the case a conspiracy against peace and the constitution. “Sabitri is just a puppet. There are many dollar-reaping individuals and agencies who don´t want the conclusion of the peace process and constitution writing, and they are pulling the strings,” Dhungel said.
“I also believe that a man should not be murdered and didn´t want Ujjan to be murdered. But we were in a war then and he was sadly killed under my leadership,” Dhungel conceded. He insisted the case was political and it was being given a personal color to implicate him.
“I have already suffered in jail for eight and half years and got my kidney damaged because of this case. They [dollar-reapers] should instead be sent to the Hague (International Criminal Court),” he countered. Lawyers handling the case for Sabitri claim that Dhungel´s jail term includes conviction for other offenses even before Ujajan´s murder.
Sabitri is taking the case to the UN amidst talk of all ´politically motivated´ cases being withdrawn as per the four-point agreement reached between the UCPN (Maoist) and Madhes-based parties before the formation of the current government.
Attorney General Mukti Pradhan had also claimed recently that Dhungel´s case was politically motivated and should be withdrawn. Pradhan, however, refused to comment to Republica on the issue, saying an attorney-general cannot comment on an individual case.
Advocate Govinda Bandhi argued that Dhungel´s case cannot be called political. “A political case is a case trumped up to implicate persons on the basis of their ideology. But Dhungel has been found guilty of murder by the court,” Bandhi claimed.
He also argued that Dhungel cannot get clemency -- then prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal had asked President Ram Baran Yadav for clemency in Dhungel´s case but the president had refused.
Bandhi claimed that in international usage presidential pardons are given in cases of miscarriage of justice where persons commit crimes without any intention and are punished by courts on technical grounds.
