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IV. Unlawful Killings and Summary Executions by Nepali Security Forces

The Nepali security forces—comprised of the police, the armed police, and the Royal Nepali Army (RNA)—have been implicated in thousands of summary executions and other unlawful killings of suspected Maoist rebels and civilians.   Since the deployment of the RNA in anti-Maoist operations in 2001, the fighting between the two sides has intensified, and the number of unlawful killings by the security forces has increased dramatically. 

Maoist forces have controlled much of the countryside in Nepal since the beginning of the insurgency.  The Nepali security forces typically operate out of heavily fortified positions at the district headquarters of each district.  From there the Nepali security forces carry out raids on suspected rebel troop concentrations, relying heavily on local informants and other sources to determine where the Maoist rebels may be located.  In a typical raid, the Nepali security forces will receive information that Maoists are staying the night in a particular village and quickly send troops to the village—often walking long distances in Nepal’s inhospitable terrain—to capture or kill the Maoists.

Since 2001, all of Nepal’s security forces have operated under a “Unified Command” giving field-level command to the RNA.  The police and paramilitary armed police continue to function as separate institutions, but their forces come under RNA command at the field operations level.  As this report documents, Nepali security forces frequently try to disguise themselves as Maoist rebels, dressing in Maoist-style clothing with red bandanas and giving the Maoist greetings (Lal Salaam, or “Red Greetings”) when arriving in villages in an attempt to flush out Maoist sympathizers when they return the greetings.

Civilians are often caught between the Nepali security forces and the Maoist rebels.  Maoist rebels spend most of their nights in civilian homes, arriving in villages and demanding to be put up in local homes.  Civilians are normally unable to refuse such demands: the price of disobedience to the Maoists is too high, often including death.  But the Nepali security forces are equally, if not more, feared by the civilian population. The security forces often assume that the rural population actively supports the Maoists and kill suspected Maoist sympathizers, even when it is clear that the civilians have had little choice but to house and feed the Maoists traveling through their villages.

According to the National Human Rights Commission of Nepal (NHRC) and other human rights organizations, government security forces have been responsible for approximately 2000 extrajudicial killings since 2001.  The accounts confirmed by Human Rights Watch present only a fraction of the cases gathered by the NHRC and reputable local human rights organizations.  Even from this relatively small sample, it is clear that summary executions of captured combatants and detained civilians are troublingly common in Nepal.

Almost invariably after persons are killed during security operations, the Unified Command will issue a statement identifying the dead as Maoist rebels and asserting that they were killed during gunfire exchanges. The following is a typical RNA announcement: “In a cross firing between the armed Maoist terrorist and Security Forces (SF) in Chilanga VDC of Dolakha district one (1) Maoist terrorist was killed.”70  In the immediate aftermath of the Doramba incident, the Army reported that the Maoists had attacked them: “the rebels first opened fire on the army contingent...[then] the rebels regrouped for yet another onslaught on the army, which resulted in further deaths on the rebel side.”71  A major attack in which nineteen persons were killed, including two civilians who were unlawfully killed and at least two Maoists who were executed after being detained (see below) was announced as follows by the RNA:

Nineteen terrorists were killed in Bhimankhola region, the border of Parsha and Makwanpur District on February 5. In the Operation District secretary of Parsha named Bashu Lamichane ( Bikash), Laxmi and the area commander named Mukti were killed.72

Such partial and often fictional accounts hide the disturbing truth of summary executions and, in some cases, the unlawful killings of civilians.  All cases described below, with the exception of Doramba which is described first because of its unique status, are arranged in reverse chronological order, beginning with the most recent.  

Summary Execution of two civilians and seventeen Maoists in Doramba, Ramechhap, August 17, 2003

As already noted above, the ceasefire that began on January 29, 2003 came to an abrupt end following the events in Doramba VDC, Ramechhaap district.  On August 17, 2003, the same day that the government and the Maoists were holding their third round of peace talks in Dang, government forces in Doramba arrested and executed nineteen persons.73  Ten days later, on August 27, 2003, the Maoists pulled out of the peace talks.74 

Doramba lies north-east of Kathmandu in a hilly region, and is inaccessible by road.  It is well known that the region is dominated by Maoists.  Since 1998, the Maoists have declared Doramba as an area under their control.  Visitors to the area describe a tense situation in which Maoists move easily and freely through the village, aware that the villagers are too afraid to act against them. 

The National Human Rights Commission sent an investigative team consisting of independent experts to Doramba on August 26, 2003, ten days after the killings, to investigate.  They found strong evidence of unlawful executions of nineteen persons, of whom two were civilians and the remaining seventeen captured combatants.75

According to the findings of the NHRC, about seventy members of the security forces, acting on intelligence that there was to be a large gathering of Maoists in Doramba that day to celebrate the wedding of two Maoist rebels, went to the village on foot in the mid-morning of August 17.  Government troops went to the house of Yuba Raj Moktan, a schoolteacher whose house had been commandeered by the Maoists for their gathering.  All nineteen persons in the house, including Yuba Raj Moktan and his son Leela, were arrested, and their hands were tied behind their back.  After some time, this group of nineteen was marched off by the army up a hill to Deurali.  At that point, the soldiers providing escort suddenly changed direction.  Around 2:15 p.m., the nineteen captives were lined up in rows by the army.  A witness, who happened to be passing, saw the troops aiming their guns at the detainees.  Shortly thereafter, the witness heard a barrage of gunfire.  Nineteen bodies were found that evening by a village search party.  The bodies were thrown down the slope by the mountain track on which they were killed.  The exhumation team which examined the bodies ten days later found that all nineteen persons had been shot at close range, with their hands tied behind their backs.  Most of the wounds were to the heads of the victims.76 

Of the nineteen killed, fifteen were identified: Baburam Tamang, Ambika Dahal, Pradeep Dong, Harka Bahadur Tamang, Rabi Chauhan, Uma Karki, Shyam Tamang, Padam Raj Giri, Bishnu Maya Thapa Magar, Thulo Ram Tamang, Sano Ram Tamang, Laxman Tamang, Yuba Raj Moktan, Leela Moktan.  Four bodies remained unidentified, because they were not from the local area and thus unknown to the villagers—they were believed to be part of the Maoist delegation at the wedding.77 

The Royal Nepal Army immediately claimed that the Maoists had provoked the incident by leading two separate armed assaults against a security patrol.  An RNA statement said that its investigative team interviewed some soldiers and officers in the district center: “Our four-person preliminary investigation team could not go to Doramba out of safety concerns. They talked to army and police personnel in the district center, and to civilians and the CDO.”78  The RNA stated that “the security forces had to retaliate in self-defense that resulted in the killing of at least twelve armed rebels. The firing continued for about twenty minutes and rocket bombs were hurled at the patrol from both sides.”79

In response to a request from the NHRC, the Army issued a letter denying that a massacre had taken place in Doramba.  After the NHRC made public its findings, the Army promised to re-examine the case, all the while publicly denouncing the NHRC’s methodology and professionalism.  For example, Brigadier General B.A. Kumar Sharma, the head of the RNA’s human rights unit, said the following about the NHRC’s findings:

It seems that the NHRC team went there, spent a night, then went on to exhume the bodies. They didn’t use special forensics instruments. Bodies buried that long bloat, it is hard to see shots or wounds on them. Now we had just left the bodies lying there after the encounters [of August 17]. God knows who had handled them, how many times they had been cleaned, and what else had been done to them before they had been buried.

The NHRC report also claims that the people had been shot in the head. Some had no skulls.  Normally, there would be entry and exit wounds, or the bullets would be in the bodies.  It would take special exploding bullets to make the entire skull shatter.  We use only normal bullets.  Plus, if the allegations are true, the bodies would be piled in one exact spot, as they were brought up and shot, one by one.  There would have been blood on them all.  In the photos, there is all over the front of one of the girls.  But the back of her clothes were clean.80

Under intense pressure, the Army issued a statement on March 12, 2004, summarizing the findings of its own new investigation.  The statement announced that a few of those killed in Doramba were killed unlawfully, but that the larger number were killed in lawful combat situations.81 Brigadier Sharma made pointed reference to the NHRC report: “We don’t believe the NHRC report ...only a few of [the Maoists] were killed after capture.  Others were killed in a separate clash.”82  This finding directly contradicts not only the NHRC report but also the eyewitness testimonies compiled by others who have subsequently visited Doramba.83  In a statement designed to demonstrate its sincerity, the Army announced that it would prosecute a senior member of the RNA, namely the major in charge of the Doramba operation, on two allegations: “failing to protect the detainees leading to a violation of their human rights, and misreporting to Army headquarters.”84 

The Army has failed to acknowledge superior responsibility on the part of more senior officers who either knew or should have known about the operation.  The Army’s argument that the major lied to headquarters about the operation, leading therefore to the Army’s initial denial of any wrong-doing in Doramba, suggests that at a minimum the Army did not investigate the allegations seriously in the first instance.  As a member of the NHRC investigative team said: “The Army should have asked earlier why their company didn’t bring back any prisoners.  If four or five had been killed and the others brought back as prisoners, that is one thing.  But when you hear that there are no prisoners, that should raise serious questions at the command.”85 

The Army has not explained its delay in investigating the massacre at Doramba, and has not imposed any accountability for the “handful” of unlawful deaths it found. The Army report has not been released, and it is impossible to know the evidentiary basis on which it made its findings.  The court martial, if it occurs, will be a closed trial, and the Nepali Army in the past has not been forthcoming with the results of its courts martial.  Bertrand Ramcharan, then the Acting U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, has called on the government of Nepal to ensure that reports of summary and extrajudicial executions by the authorities should be investigated by an independent body, and that perpetrators should be tried in criminal courts, and not by military tribunals.86  Prosecuting the perpetrators of the Doramba massacre under normal and transparent criminal procedures would go a long way to showing the good faith of the government to prevent and punish such outrages by its security forces. 

The Doramba massacre shocked Nepal.  The facts were simple and brutal.  It was the first time that the nation was forced to confront what human rights activists had been arguing all along—namely, that the Maoists were not the only party responsible for brutal executions.  In the weeks and months following Doramba, politicians, human rights activists and foreign governments (with the notable exception of the United States) condemned the Army’s actions publicly and repeatedly.87  The National Human Rights Commission, through its groundbreaking work—this was the first time that a forensic exhumation had been carried out in Nepal—gained credibility that the government had actively and successfully sought to undermine up to that point. 

Maoist rebels reportedly killed a local nurse shortly after the Doramba massacre.88  The Maoists believe that she was the informer who told the security forces about their gathering in Doramba that day.  The killing of the nurse served to increase the fear among villagers of the consequences of being suspected by the Maoists, and to increase their iron grip on the countryside. 

Summary Execution of two suspected Maoists in Bardiya District, March 11, 2004

In the late afternoon of March 11, 2004, Unified Command forces surrounded the village of Belbhar, Bardiya district, on the outskirts of Nepalgunj, a city in southern Nepal.  All access roads were blocked off by the distinctive green jeeps of the RNA.89  Other soldiers on foot, heavily armed, went door to door, searching all houses.  They said they were looking for some Maoists whom they had been informed were staying in Belbhar. 

Villagers working in the fields and in a brick kiln factory saw soldiers running through the fields.  According to several eyewitnesses who spoke with Human Rights Watch, two men were being pursued by the Army.  The men were running through the fields, and as far as the villagers could see, they were not carrying weapons visibly.90  An eyewitness who was working in the fields close to where the two men were eventually shot said that he saw the two men emerge from the field, with their arms up, saying “We are not Maoists, please help us.  We surrender.”91  The witness watched as the soldiers, who had the suspects well outnumbered and surrounded, shot the two surrendering men dead at close range.92

Villagers saw the army taking the bodies away in one of their jeeps.  They do not know what happened to the bodies afterwards.93

Summary Execution of Nirajan Thapa, Bardiya District , end-February 2004

About forty kilometres away from the southern city of Nepalgunj  is a large village, which is frequently patrolled by the security forces who believe Maoist sympathies run deep in the area.  Towards the end of February 2004, about sixty soldiers in military camouflage uniform came running into the village, fully armed, shouting that they were looking for some Maoists who had come to Mahmutpur from Dang.  The villagers had heard that four Maoists from Dang had arrived in their village on motorbikes, but none of these four were known personally to the villagers. 

The four men started running away along the main road in the village as soon as they heard the soldiers looking for them.  Eyewitnesses said that none of the men were visibly armed.  According to eyewitnesses, the soldiers overtook and arrested two of these men and took them away.  These two men were later released uncharged and unharmed. 

The soldiers continued to chase the other two men.  One of the men seems to have escaped arrest; no one saw what happened to him.  The security forces then surrounded the fourth man, who sought refuge at the base of a young bamboo tree behind a house in the village.  The residents of this house had never seen this man before.   Two soldiers approached the bamboo tree, and positioned themselves at one and five meter distances from the tree.  There were soldiers in the field behind the bamboo tree, and all along the avenues leading up to it.   Eyewitnesses heard the man begging, saying “please save me.”  The two soldiers near the bamboo tree fired three shots, and the villagers saw the man slump to the ground.

The soldiers forced some of the villagers to dig a shallow grave right at the base of the bamboo tree and the body was buried there.  On their way out of the village, the soldiers took sacks of potatoes, lentils and rice from the house in front of the bamboo tree.  They also destroyed a new stereo system in the house. 

Later that night, local Maoists disinterred the body and re-buried it in a deeper grave with full rituals.  It was only then that the villagers learned the name of the man who was killed, Nirajan Thapa.94

Summary Execution of suspected Maoists in Sarlahi district, late February, 2004

On February 24, 2004, at about 6 a.m., a group of about two hundred soldiers entered Hazariya village in Sarlahi District.  Two alleged Maoists, forty-year-old Gopal Karki and thirty-year-old Raj Narayen Roy, were entering Hazariya village around the same time.  An eyewitness told Human Rights Watch that a policeman accompanying the soldiers recognized Gopal Karki, and that the soldiers quickly surrounded and captured the two men: “They surrounded the two men, and ordered them to raise their hands.  They raised their hands, and then their arms were tied behind their backs.”95  The soldiers proceeded to search the men, and found a pistol and several pipe bombs.  The men were then beaten by the soldiers, and marched away from the village.  The witness attempted to follow the soldiers, but was stopped by a policeman who reassured her they would just take the men to the police station and promised they would not kill them.

The next day, the bodies of the two men were found about one kilometer from the place where they had been arrested, near the village of Bagmati.  Human Rights Watch could not travel to Bagmati to interview villagers there about the killings, because Maoist activity in the area made the place unsafe.  However, the accounts of the relatives of the victims establish that the men were taken away in the custody of a large group of soldiers and strongly suggests that the men were later summarily executed.96

Summary Execution of five suspected Maoists, Banke district, February 19, 2004

Pedari village in Banke District is surrounded on all sides by large farm fields, and is only accessible via a narrow dirt path.  When Human Rights Watch visited, there were open signs of a strong Maoist presence in the village: pro-Maoist slogans painted on walls and red flags hanging from bamboo trees. 

Several eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch that in the afternoon of February 19, 2004, a group of five or six armed men, presumed to be Maoist soldiers, were resting in a house near the edge of the village.  The army entered the village in large numbers.  They seemed to know exactly which house the alleged Maoists were staying in, because they went directly to this house and positioned themselves.  Several sharpshooters were stationed on trees surrounding the house, many others encircled the house, and yet others were stationed in the outlying fields. 

The soldiers then started calling on the alleged Maoists to come out and surrender.  They had a megaphone, and villagers in the nearby houses could clearly hear what was being said.  The soldiers told the Maoists that they were surrounded and they would be safe if they surrendered.  The soldiers fired some shots towards the house; eyewitnesses said that no shots came from inside the house.  After some time, the door of the house opened, and one man came out holding his hands up in the air.  Eyewitnesses said that the other men were directly behind this first one.  One witness close to the scene saw that the others also had their hands up in the air.  As soon as the first man came out of the door, army sharpshooters positioned in the trees opened fire and shot him dead.  After this, the other Maoists started running away, heading out into the nearby fields.  They were all shot and killed in different spots as they were running away. 

The army gathered the bodies and buried them in shallow graves in the village.  That night, a group of Maoists dug up the bodies, and carried them out to a nearby field where they buried the bodies amid some young bamboo trees.  The Maoists erected red flags up on each of the graves.  On one of the flags is painted a white star, indicating that this particular person had been a local commander.97

Indiscriminate Killing of Three Villagers near Kabilash, February 17, 2004

At about 5 a.m. on February 17, 2004, a group of about twenty to thirty youngsters had gathered on the main Mugling-Narayanghat Highway, leading from Kathmandu to Chitwan, near the village of Kabilash.  February 17 was the day of the Shivaratri festival, celebrating the Hindu god Shiva.  Children and young adults from the village had picked the day to solicit donations for the rebuilding of their village temple to Lord Shiva, which had been destroyed in a landslide the year before.  The group set up to stop the traffic coming down the highway in both directions, asking for voluntary donations and giving the drivers traditional vermilion paste symbolizing blessings in return.

About fifteen minutes after the youngsters started collecting the donations, a group of army soldiers drove up from the direction of Chitwan and opened fire on the group without warning.  A farmer who was standing by the road warming himself by a wood fire recalled that: 

All of a sudden we heard firing, only fifteen minutes after we started collecting money. The firing came from the Chitwan side, south of the village.  Five of us were wounded.  The distance between us and the soldiers was only ten meters…There was no warning before the shooting.98

Another witness interviewed by Human Rights Watch recalled the shooting in almost identical terms: 

Some of us were collecting money from the drivers, while others were sitting on the side of the road.  I had the pot of teeka [vermillion paste to give traditional blessings with on the forehead of the recipient] to give blessings.  Then the army came.  They didn’t say anything.  Tirki saw them and said something like, “the army is coming.”  We didn’t run away, we just stood there.  Tirki was standing next to me and was killed.  We were just standing there [at the time of the shooting], the army was less than five meters away from me.  None of us had any guns or red bandanas [worn by Maoists].  I didn’t see anyone trying to run.99

Three young villagers were killed by the shooting: twenty-one-year-old Tirki Parja, who was standing in the road giving teeka blessings to the drivers passing by; twenty-one-year-old Biraj Gurung, who was standing near Tirki; and his brother, fourteen-year-old Sunil Gurung, who was standing at the opposite side of the road.100  Two others were injured: a twenty-one year old man was shot in the right shoulder, and a nineteen-year-old woman was shot in the leg and stomach.101  

It is possible that the troops  who fired on the villagers believed that they were responding to Maoist cadres extorting money from drivers, because the road is in an area where Maoist rebels are active—in the night before the Human Rights Watch visit, Maoist rebels had attempted to close the highway just a few kilometers north of the village by cutting trees and destroying power lines.  The villagers had also been unable to inform the authorities that they planned to hold the fundraising event for their temple, as the day prior had been a Maoist-ordered general strike day on which travel was prohibited.102  However, none of these circumstances justify the lethal response of the troops, who opened fire without warning on a clearly distinguishable civilian crowd, killing three people and wounding two others.

Unlike many other incidents, the RNA does appear to have taken limited action in response to this incident.  According to the father of Biraj and Sunil Gurung, a colonel from the RNA’s human rights unit visited him a few days after the shooting, apologizing for the shooting and offering compensation, although no money has yet been received by the family.103  The RNA has not announced whether it will take any disciplinary action against the soldiers responsible.

Summary Execution of suspected Maoist in Guleriya District, mid-February, 2004

At about 3:30 p.m. one afternoon in mid-February 2004, a group of about forty Unified Command troops entered a small  village  in Guleriya district, a cluster of small mud houses about an hour’s drive outside of Nepalgunj.  Some soldiers came on foot and others in jeeps along the one narrow dirt road in the village.  The soldiers headed straight for the house at the edge of the village belonging to an elderly couple.  Most of the villagers were out working in the fields at that time, so the village was largely deserted.  Only the elderly woman, her daughter-in-law, and her twelve year old grand-daughter were near the house at that time.  The daughter-in-law was inside the house cooking dinner. 

The troops called out to the two older women, telling them that there was a Maoist hiding in their house.  According to the women,, the soldiers said that a fleeing Maoist had quietly entered their small home, using a separate side door and thus going undetected.  One of the soldiers, who seemed to be the commander of the group, ordered the elderly woman, about seventy years old, to go inside and tell the Maoist to surrender to the security forces.  The security forces told her that they would kill her if she didn’t do as they ordered. 

The daughter-in-law and the twelve-year-old girl were told to stay outside.  The elderly woman entered the house, and saw a man with a beard crouching behind the traditional earthen vats used for storing grains.  The bearded man, whom the woman had never seen before, was dressed in civilian clothes and was bleeding from a wound. Meanwhile, the security forces had their weapons trained on the house, and several of them were poking their rifles through the small ventilation shafts which serve as windows.  The security forces also kept shouting out to the man that he didn’t have to be afraid, that he would be all right if he just surrendered.  The elderly woman was terrified and shaking, and begged the man to surrender, telling him that the security forces would kill her if he didn’t surrender. Many of the villagers working in the fields came to watch what was happening.104

After about fifteen minutes, the alleged Maoist agreed to surrender.  He came out of the tiny house,105 with his hands folded in front of him in the traditional Nepali namaste gesture, signifying surrender.  As soon as he stepped out, the security forces directly outside the house shot and killed him.  Eyewitnesses heard first one shot, and then two others.  In the words of the twelve-year-old girl:

I saw him come out doing namaste, with his hands above his head.  I heard bullets, and I looked away because I was scared.  He shouted: “Oh Dai [elder brother] why are you killing me, why are you killing me.” Then I saw him lying on the ground.  There was a lot of blood everywhere.  He was about one meter away from me when they shot him.106 

The security forces then rifled through the man’s pockets.  They found a plastic bag containing about 60,000 Nepali rupees (about U.S. $800)107.  They counted the money out loud in front of the villagers.  They then announced that they were going to destroy his pistol.  The villagers heard a small detonation and they were told that his pistol had been destroyed, although none of the villagers saw a pistol or its remnants.  The soldiers then asked one of the men to get a rope, which they then used to tie the body and drag it to the river.  The villagers do not know what happened to the body after this, but believe that the troops took the body away or buried it somewhere by the river.108

Extrajudicial Execution of two girls in Kavre district, February 12, 2004

At about midnight on the evening of February 12, 2004, a group of Nepali army troops arrived in the village of Pokahari Chauri, Ward 4, located in the Kavre district about forty-five kilometers north of the town of Dolalghat along a steep mountain dirt road. According to the villagers, there was at least one Maoist sleeping in their village that night, and a large contingent of Maoists was spending the night in a village about thirty minutes walk away.

The Unified Command troops entered the village and went to the house of Karna Bahadur Rasaili, a fifty-three-year-old villager whose son Deepak and daughter Gita had joined the Maoists earlier in 2003.  When the troops knocked on the door, they initially falsely identified themselves as Maoists, calling out to Karna Bahadur Rasaili by name, and saying they were comrades and friends of his son Deepak.109 By the time Karna Bahadur’s wife reached the door, the soldiers had already broken in and entered into the home.

The family had visitors—Karna Bahadur’s sister, Devi Sunuwar and her brother-in-law, Murali Sunuwar—staying with them.  Everyone was asleep when the men arrived.  Four or five soldiers entered the house and woke everyone up, asked them for their names, physically searched them and also searched the house.  When Reena, the seventeen-year-old daughter of the house identified herself, they grabbed her by the arm and took her outside the house.  They also took thirty-eight-year-old Murali Sunuwar.  According to her family, Reena Rasaili had no links to the Maoists, and was a student who worked as a social worker for the Kavre Rural Energy  Development Center, educating the villagers about hygiene and other life skills. 

Initially, the soldiers interrogated both Reena and Murali.  According to Murali, the soldiers beat them both and hit them with rifles.  Karna Bahadur, his wife, and his sister Devi Sunuwar were ordered to remain inside the home and was held at gunpoint. After about an hour or so, the soldiers lost interest in Murali and told him to sit to one side. They all began to question Reena.  Murali witnessed the interrogation:

They asked her, “how many months did you spend with the Maoists? Where did you go? Where are their hideouts?” But they would not let Reena answer. They asked her questions and hit her on her feet with their rifle butts. Reena said that she was innocent and wanted to show them her identity card. She kept saying, “I am not Maoist. I want to live.”110

For some time, Reena was also moved to an adjacent cowshed. Recalls Murali. “I could not see what was going on but I could hear them shouting, accusing Reena of being a Maoist and I could hear Reena crying out in pain.”111

From midnight until 4:30 a.m., the frightened family members listened as the soldiers interrogated Reena, who kept insisting on her innocence, explaining that she had two siblings who were Maoists but that she herself was only a social worker.  At some point in the night, the soldiers asked Karna Bahadur to find them some rope to tie Reena’s hands with.

At 4:30 a.m., a few gunshots rang out from elsewhere in the village, and soon thereafter a second group of soldiers arrived at the home of Karna Bahadur.  The newly arrived soldiers apologized for being delayed, and Karna Bahadur overheard them speaking about the killing of a girl (who was later determined to be Subhadra Chaulagain, discussed below) in the village, saying that they had some difficulties because the gun misfired.  According to Karna Bahadur, another soldier then asked what should be done with Reena, and was told “We’ll have to finish her as well.”  When he heard this, Karna Bahadur went to the window to plead with the soldiers, but was told to go back and warned that “if you open that window again, we will kill you as well.”112

Reena was led away behind the house, and Murali was released and ordered to join the others inside.  Fifteen minutes later, the family heard three shots coming from the back of the house.  The family was too afraid to leave the house in the night, but went out as dawn broke the next  morning and found the partially unclothed body of Reena less than one hundred meters away from their home.  She had been shot in the head and chest.  Human Rights Watch could not confirm the reports of local human rights activists that Reena had been raped, although the possibility cannot be excluded.

As indicated above, a separate group of soldiers also went to the home of Kedar Nath Chaulagain, located about two hundred meters away. That night, a Maoist who was a friend of Kedar’s daughter, seventeen-year-old Subhadra Chaulagain, had come to spend the night in the family’s home.  At around midnight, a group of about thirty soldiers, most of them in civilian dress but including several in army and police uniforms, knocked  on the door, initially identifying themselves as “brothers” in an attempt to pass themselves off as Maoists (Maoists frequently refer to one another as “brother” or “comrade”).  As soon as the soldiers came to the house, the guest succeeded in fleeing through an upstairs window.  The soldiers shot at him, but he escaped unharmed.

The soldiers, angered by the successful escape, began beating and cursing Kedar Chaulagain as soon as they entered the home.  One of the men with the soldiers, apparently an informant, then pointed at Kedar’s daughter Subhadra and said, “That girl is Asmita, arrest her.”  While the family attempted to explain that their daughter’s name was Subhadra and not Asmita, a soldier grabbed the girl and dragged her out of the house by her hair.

As her father watched while being guarded outside his home by two soldiers, a group of ten soldiers took his daughter outside and began questioning her. Subhadra explained that she had joined the Maoists for a period a year before but was no longer with them.  She asked her mother to find her school identity card and then showed it as proof that she had resumed her studies.  She begged the soldiers to arrest her and take her with them to the district headquarters so everything could be sorted out.113

Suddenly, one of the soldiers yelled, “The bitch is trying to flee” and opened fire on Subhadra.  Immediately after the shooting, the soldiers came to Kedar Chaulagain and beat and kicked him to the point of unconsciousness before leaving. Her mother rushed to pick up her husband and daughter.  She found the body of Subhadra just meters away from where she had been interrogated.114

Extrajudicial Execution of suspected Maoists in Raghunathpur, mid-February, 2004

One day in mid-February 2004, at about 11:00 a.m., a group of RNA soldiers unlawfully killed two men at Raghunathpur, executing both of them after they had been wounded.  According to witnesses, the soldiers were dressed to appear like Maoists, wearing red bandanas across their foreheads and red cloths over their chests, but were recognized as soldiers by the villagers (and also identified themselves later as soldiers).115  The soldiers first approached a group of men and children who were gathered around a pond on the outskirt of the village, playing cricket and washing themselves.  When the soldiers approached, many of the villagers ran away out of fear, and the soldiers immediately opened fire.116

Among the group gathered at the pond was Kishori Raut Kurmi, a twenty-seven-year-old man who worked as a plumber in the nearby city of Birgunj and had come to the village to participate in his sister’s wedding ceremony.  Kishori was riding his bicycle home, and when the soldiers began shooting he dropped his bicycle and ran away into the nearby fields.  He was wounded in the chest while running, but managed to make his way into the village.  An eyewitness told Human Rights Watch how the soldiers then located Kishori in the village and executed the wounded man right in front of her:

Kishori was injured in our onion field, just on the edge of some houses.  He ran between the houses and came to me, wounded in the chest.  When he was sitting, the soldiers came to us and grabbed Kishori.  They then shot him in the head with a rifle.  The army soldiers came, they told me to go away, and shot Kishori.  I was just a few meters away.  Then [after they killed Kishori] they asked me if he was a Maoist.  I said no, he is from our village.  Then they collected some young people from the village and took the body near the pond and buried it.117

Another villager whose home overlooks the pond where the incident started and the fields where the shooting took place, also watched as Kishori was wounded and ran into the courtyard between the nearby homes.  According to him, the soldiers split into two groups as they came to the village, still firing.  One group went to search for Kishori, while the second group continued right by his home and killed a second villager, eighteen-year-old Suresh Raut Kurmi Patel, who worked at a nearby brick factory:

Suresh came outside toward a buffalo that had been wounded in the nose.  When he heard the [continuing] firing, he ran away…Suresh was shot in the leg and fell down in the field.  The soldier came up to Suresh and pulled him up, and then shot him in the chest.  I saw this with my own eyes [from a house nearby.]  Then they took the dead bodies to the field and buried them [near the pond.]118

The villagers, angered by the killings of innocent civilians, dug up the bodies a few days later and organized a large crowd to march with the exhumed bodies on the district headquarters in protest.  At the district headquarters, the village leaders met with district officials and made a formal complaint about the murders, and according to one of the participants in the meeting were promised compensation.  However, as far as the villagers were aware, no investigation into the killings has yet taken place and no compensation has been provided.

Summary Executions and Unlawful Killings in Chure Bhiman, February 5, 2004

On February 5, 2004, the RNA carried out a major raid against a group of Maoists, including the district’s political commissar for the Maoists, Basu “Bikas” Chapagai, that was spending the night in the village of Chure Bhiman. Seventeen Maoists were killed in the raid, as were two civilians.  While the presence of the Maoists in the village presented a military justification for the raid, the manner in which the RNA carried out the raid points to many of the same violations documented by Human Rights Watch in other cases: the execution of captured combatants and detained civilians suspected of being Maoists.

According to the local villagers, a group of Maoists had come to their village at 6:00 p.m. the night before, seeking to be quartered in civilian homes for the night.  As elsewhere, the local villagers felt they had little choice but to comply with the Maoists’ demands, and the Maoists were put up in several homes in the village.

Shortly before midnight, a large group of RNA soldiers entered the village, apparently tipped off that there were Maoists sleeping there.  During their raid on the village, RNA soldiers killed two civilians, and executed two captured Maoists that they had used to show them the locations of other Maoists in the village. 

A witness related to of one of the civilians killed, described how the RNA soldiers executed Raj Kumar, who was living in the village and working as a sharecropper, and then shot an elderly woman trying to prevent the execution:

At 6:00 p.m., five Maoists came to the house.  They asked if we had a place to sleep, and I told them we did not have any space.  Two came inside anyway, saw some space upstairs, and prepared to sleep.  Three others went to sleep in the cattle shed. They didn’t ask for any food.

At about 11:00 p.m., the soldiers came and surrounded our house.  We were sleeping on the ground.  Also at the house were my baby, my mother, and two brothers.  Just before the army came, [a neighbor] and three other of his family came to our house.

The soldiers came, knocked on the door and asked us to open the door.  They asked Raj Kumar to come out, and asked him where he was from and what he was doing in our village.  Raj Kumar explained that he owned no land to cultivate, and so had come to work here.  They asked for his complete address and he gave it.  They said he was a Maoist, but he denied it.  Then they took him to the corner of the yard and started firing [killing Raj Kumar].119

The neighbor’s grandmother, eighty-year-old Suka Maya Bal, ran out of the home when she heard the shots, shouting for help.  On the threshold of the home, she herself was shot by the soldiers, and retreated back into the home.  She died of her wounds that night, a few hours after the shooting, according to eyewitnesses.120

While it appears that most of the Maoists were killed during exchanges of gunfire with the soldiers, at least two of the Maoists killed that night were clearly detained by the soldiers, taken around the village to locate other Maoists, and then executed.  A village woman told Human Rights Watch how two Maoists came to her home the previous evening and requested to sleep there.  In the night, a group of soldiers came to her home, pretending to be Maoists.  They captured the two sleeping Maoists without a fight, tied their hands behind their backs, and took them away.121  The next morning, the bodies of the two captured Maoists, their hands still tied up, where found near the home of Lok Badner where two civilians and several Maoists were killed (see above).122

Human Rights Watch was unable to investigate the killing of the remaining Maoists who were staying in a home located elsewhere in the village, because the owner of the home—the only witness to the killings—had left the village after the incident.  However, according to a report of the Nepal Bar Association, whose investigators met with the son of the home owner who was in the house: “There were several rounds of firing. I was inside and hiding myself on the bed.  I could not come our because of fear. All of the Maoists who were staying at my house were killed. There was no firing from inside."123

Summary Execution of suspected Maoist in Uswalpur, early-January 2004

At about 2:00 a.m. on a night in early-January, 2004, a group of army soldiers surrounded the home of twenty-two-year-old Dinesh Mahoto in Uswalpur VDC.  According to a relative, Dinesh Mahoto was a Maoist area commander.124  The relative said the soldiers woke them from their sleep, and then ordered Dinesh Mahoto to come with them for some “work.”  The mother of Dinesh Mahoto attempted to follow the soldiers and her son, but was ordered to return to her house by the soldiers, who threatened to shoot her if she did not comply.

Two hours later, the family heard some shots outside their home.  Mahoto’s wife ran outside to find the soldiers pulling the body of her husband toward their truck with a rope tied to his arms.  She stood watching and crying as the soldiers loaded the body of her husband onto their vehicle and left the area.  The body of her husband was never returned to the family.125

Summary Execution of five suspected Maoists in Sanischare, late-December, 2003

At about 6:30 p.m. one evening in late December, 2003, a large group of RNA soldiers came to a village in Sanischare VDC, apparently tipped off that a group of Maoists had come to the village that same day to spend the night.  According to a neighbor, one of the Maoists attempted to escape, but was caught by the soldiers:

One person was running across the fields and the soldiers were chasing him.  They caught him about fifty meters from my house, while another group of soldiers surrounded my neighbor’s house.  The caught person was taken to the field just in front of my house and they started beating him.  They beat him for about half an hour, and then they shot him in my potato field.  He was beaten severely, and kept asking for water.  He was on the ground laying down when they shot him, standing over him.126

According to the neighbor, as well as a second witness, the soldiers were able to enter the home where the Maoists were staying without a fire fight, and spent significant time inside the home, apparently interrogating the Maoists:

“The soldiers spoke to the Maoists for about one hour before they shot them…I heard them asking if they were central [committee] members of the Maoists, and I heard someone screaming in pain from inside.  The soldiers had captured the Maoists.  Then I head four shots.”127 

A third witness confirmed to Human Rights Watch that the soldiers had been in the upstairs of the home for about one hour “coming and going” prior to the shooting, but he could not overhear any conversation as he had been farther away from the home, and could not be sure if the soldiers had actually detained the Maoists prior to the shooting.128  The neighbor, whose home was adjacent to the home where the incident took place, was adamant that the soldiers had been in the same room with the Maoists and had spoken to them for nearly an hour prior to the shooting.

The circumstances of the killings—the long interval between the entry of the soldiers into the home and the firing of the shots that killed the Maoists, the conversations overheard by the neighbors, and the fact that only four shots were fired to kill four suspects, as well as the lack of any gunfire exchanges—strongly indicate that the four Maoist suspects were summarily executed long after coming under the control of the soldiers.

After the shooting, the army brought the four bodies, including the body of a woman, out of the home and gathered them in the field next to the body of the fifth Maoist shot out in the potato field.  The army ordered the two neighbors out of their homes and asked them to identify the bodies, but neither men knew the Maoists.  The soldiers then left, ordering the men to look after the bodies for the night, and returned the next day to bury the bodies on the outskirts of the village.  The five Maoists remain buried on the outskirts of the village.  The five dead Maoists were identified by the Informal Sector Service Center (INSEC), a leading human rights NGO, as Mitra P. Bhattarai, Menuka Chemjong, Bir Bahadur Basret, Rajendra Gautam, and Nagendra Pokhrel.

Summary Execution of two suspected Maoists in Madeli, mid-December, 2003

At about 5:30 a.m. on a day in mid-December 2003, a group of about thirty to thirty-five RNA soldiers and police officials entered a village in Madeli VDC.  According to villagers, several Maoists from other villages had stayed the night in that village, and three Maoists were captured by the security services, after some shooting which accidentally wounded an eight-year-old boy, Ashok Sharma.  Three villagers were also captured by the security services, and told Human Rights Watch how the security services began to beat and interrogate the three suspected Maoists, and then executed two, before leaving the village with the third captured Maoist suspect who they never saw again.

According to a seventeen-year-old student who was among the local villagers detained with the Maoists suspects:

Another three people were arrested and their hands were tied…It was about 6:30 a.m. when I saw them.  They were taken to where I was being kept, and questioned about their professions and homes.  Then they were told to sit down.  After they sat down, the soldiers started beating them, for about forty-five minutes.  Then they took two of them just a few meters away.  The soldiers ordered the two men to stand and shot them from behind.  I was still sitting with the other detained persons.  The next one [i.e., the third Maoist suspect] was beaten.  At around noon, they took the third one with them as they walked through the village.  They released me first, I don’t know what happened to him.

The people killed were not from the village, I didn’t know them.  When the army beat them, they admitted they were Maoists.129

A second man detained with the Maoist suspects gave an identical account in a separate interview with Human Rights Watch: “The army started beating the three Maoists, and then asked us villagers if we wanted to watch the killings.  We said we didn’t want to see it.  The army took all three about ten meters away.  They then took two of them to the road near a canal and shot them.”130  According to local human rights investigators from INSEC, the disappeared third person is Pramod Chaudhari, aged twenty-six, who has been missing since the incident. 

Summary Execution of four Suspected Maoists in Thanmunna, late-November, 2003

A large religious festival was taking place in Thanmunna VDC in late November 2003.  The festival was drawing in villagers from the surrounding area.  Probably tipped off that Maoists would go to the festival, a group of fifty or sixty soldiers set up checkpoints around the village, attempting to intercept the Maoists.  A sixty-three-year-old man was on his way to the festival at about 8:30 am when he heard two shots coming from the army checkpoint and saw soldiers chasing a man through the fields.  According to the man, “two soldiers took a motorcycle from the village and started chasing the man who was running.  He fell down in the canal, and the soldiers pulled him out of the canal, brought him to the side of the road, and shot him twice.  They left his body there.”131

Meanwhile, soldiers at the north side of the village had also detained three Maoists suspects, apparently after finding pipe bombs in the bags they were carrying.  Several witnesses, including a local government worker, told Human Rights Watch that they saw the three detained Maoists being held in a yard in the village, blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their backs.  Later, shots were heard coming from the yard, and when she returned from work the government worker saw the bodies of the three suspected Maoists in the same yard she had last seen them alive, bound and blindfolded, strongly suggesting that the men had been summarily executed.132

The bodies of the three men were thrown in a hole and superficially covered, while the fourth body was thrown in the canal.  The next day, the army returned, and made local villagers bury the bodies in a deeper grave, where they remained when Human Rights Watch visited.  According to local human rights workers, the four killed men were identified as Buddi Binod Pokhrel alias “Bishwas,” Bal Bahadur Sardar, Umar Chaudhari, and Shankar Poudel.

Summary Execution and killing of suspected Maoists in Bengadabar, mid-September, 2003

 One morning in mid-September 2003, at about 10:30 a.m., a military vehicle stopped in front of the Bengadabar VDC home of Ganesh Jarga, a forty-seven-year-old man who was, according to a relative, a Maoist area commander.  When the army arrived, Jarga was in front of his home, repairing a bicycle while a Maoist district committee member, thirty-five-year-old Rohit Kafle, was visiting him.  When the army vehicle stopped in from of the home, someone inside said “He’s home.” The two suspected Maoists started running away and the soldiers gave chase.

Ganesh Jarga’s relatives told Human Rights Watch that he was caught at the back of the house before being brought back in the front yard where he was later executed.  According to an eyewitness of the killing:

The soldiers started chasing from both sides of the house.  Rohit was running fast, but Ganesh is older and slower.  They chased him some ninety meters and then caught him…They took him to the street [in the front of the house]…They spoke to [his wife].  After about a half hour, they took him behind the mango trees in the wheat field and shot him four times.133

A relative told Human Rights Watch that the soldiers who took her husband to the street in front of the house briefly spoke to their superiors over the radio, and received direct instructions to kill the captured man.  She claims that she overheard the soldiers speaking on their radio set, telling their superiors “We have arrested one, what should we do?”  The response, according to the witness was “Shoot them from behind.”  Almost immediately, the soldiers took Ganesh Jarga behind the house and executed him.134

Rohit, the Maoist district committee member who was visiting Ganesh Jarga, was also killed in the encounter.  He ran behind the home, but was wounded while trying to flee.  According to the witnesses, the soldiers only found Rohit after a lengthy search of the fields behind the home, and then fired several more shots, killing him.  It is unknown whether Rohit resisted when he was finally located by the soldiers, or whether the soldiers executed an already wounded man. After the killings, the army collected both bodies, and took the bodies with them.  The bodies were never returned to the families.135

Unlawful Killings of two civilians in Bara district, early August, 2003

Around noon on a day in early August, 2003 a group of about fifty policemen dressed in plain blue uniforms killed two civilians in Bara District.  The policemen approached the village from the direction of the bazaar at about 11:00 a.m., splitting into two groups.  A teenage boy witnessed the killing of forty-five-year-old Raj Dev Yadav by one of the police groups before he himself was detained:

It was during daytime, just after lunch.  Six or seven people including myself were cutting grass out in the field.  We were sitting under a big tree.  The police came towards us and ordered us to remain seated there. 

Raj Dev had gone to town to sell his cows.  He didn’t see the police coming from behind him.  He was on his bicycle, and stopped his bicycle to go to the field to relieve himself.  When he got back to the road, he had some mud on his pants. 

The police were waiting at the road and asked where he was from, asking him his name and demanding he point out his house.  Raj Dev said he had come back with money from selling his cows.  They asked him why he had gone to the field, and he explained he had gone to the toilet.  Then the police shot him. At first the gun didn’t go off, so they shot him again [and killed him].136

After the shooting, the other men cutting grass were detained and taken to the police station for the night, where one of the men was beaten. 

Around the same time as the killing of Raj Dev, the second group of policemen killed thirty-five-year-old Bramaha Dev Ram nearby.  According to a farmer who was accompanying BramahaDev Ram to his field at the time of the shooting, a group of about fifteen policemen came up to Bramaha Dev Ram, asked him to stop, and shot him from a distance of about eight meters: “The police team stopped Bramaha Dev Ram, and then they shot him.  He was stopped when they shot him, he didn’t try to run away.  He was about eight meters away from the police.  They didn’t ask any questions.”137

The police motive for the killings remains unclear.  The relatives of the victims and other witnesses are adamant that the victims were not Maoists, only simple farmers.  Even if the two victims were suspected Maoists, the accounts of the killings given by villagers suggest that the police could have easily arrested the men, as both appear to have been stopped and cooperating with the police.  As with so many killings in Nepal, no investigation of the circumstances of the killings appear to have taken place, as none of the witnesses or family members were contacted by investigators after the killings.

Summary Execution of Haider Ansari, July 29, 2003

At about 10:30 a.m. on July 29, 2003, a group of thirty or thirty-five Nepali police entered Parsa, driving their truck to the main market place before descending.  Initially, the villagers thought a group of Maoists had entered the village, confused by the informal dress of the police and the red bandanas some were wearing.  The police soon started shooting at villagers who attempted to run away, according to the villagers.  A farmer described how the police caught one of the villagers, twenty-four-year-old Haider Ansari, and promptly executed him:

I was out doing my toilet when I saw people running and heard firing.  There was a rice field nearby and I went to hide there.  Haider was also there.  They caught Haider, and asked him, “Who are you?” He said he was a farmer and was in the field to manage his irrigation.  They accused him of being a Maoist, and he said he wasn’t.  Then they asked him for his name, and he said “My name is Haider.”  As soon as he gave his name, two of them started firing at him.  Haider fell down in the rice field—the ones who shot him were right next to Haider.138

The shooting spree of the police seems to have been particularly indiscriminate.  Another villager, a fifty-year-old retired man, was shot in the arm at the back of his house, and had to flee for his life through the fields.139  After the killing of Haider, who was Muslim, the villagers took his body to the local mosque.  The police then came to the mosque, and took the body away.  The body was never returned to the family, which is adamant that Haider had nothing to do with the Maoists.

Although the police attempted to disguise themselves as Maoists—a common tactic, aimed at flushing out Maoist sympathizers who would return the traditional “red greetings”—they revealed their real identity during the raid by arresting about a dozen villagers, and taking them to the police station in Nawalpur where the villagers were beaten with sticks and interrogated for the next three days.140

Extrajudicial Executions of two women in Bardiya District, mid-December 2003

In the dry winter months, villagers in the southern plains known as the Terai  will often take their livestock and move into makeshift accommodations by the edge of the woods where there is more fodder for the animals.  Following this tradition, several women in the small isolated village of Mahadevpuri had moved with their livestock to the edge of the woods, about half an hour away from the village.  On the night of December 16, 2003, some women, including Jayakali and Hitkala Dangee, were asleep in the makeshift accommodation.   Also with them was Hitkala’s young son. 

At around one in the morning, one of the women felt someone nudging her awake.  She woke up, and found several soldiers standing around the sleeping women.  By the light of the dying fire, she could see that some of these solders were in civilian clothes, and some were in camouflage uniforms.  The men were all well armed, and all of them wore black army boots.  Villagers who had been in the woods both the day before and on that day remember seeing many soldiers positioned at different points throughout the woods. 

The soldiers falsely told the women that they were Maoists who hid by day and moved by night.  They asked the women to make food for them.  One woman pretended that she had hurt her hand, and on that excuse stayed lying down.  Hitkala got up, re-kindled the fire, and prepared food for the soldiers.  After they had eaten, the soldiers told Hitkala that they were looking for their comrades who were supposed to be at a nearby Maoist training center.  They told the women that they needed to show them the way to the training center.  Hitkala asked one of the other women to look after her young son, and then she asked Jayakali to come with her so that she would not be alone with the soldiers. 

Jayakali and Hitkala walked ahead of the men, who followed behind with flashlights in their hands.  As they went off, the women realized that there were many other soldiers right around them, stationed in different places in the fields and the woods.

The two women never returned.  Their bodies were found seventeen days later, stuffed into a shallow grave by the side of a stream.  Stones and rocks had been put on top of the grave.  There were no bullets in their bodies.  There were bruises on both their faces.  Because of the lapse of time and the lack of forensic expertise in such an isolated area, the cause of their deaths has not been established.  The villagers believe that the two women were raped and then strangled, but the lack of forensic evidence and the fact that the women were killed outside the presence of any villagers makes it impossible to confirm these allegations.  The army and forces under its control have yet to investigate what happened to these two women who were last seen alive in their custody.141  



[70] Royal Nepali Army News Bulletin, May 25, 2004, [online] http://www.rna.np.html (retrieved May 12, 2004.)

[71] “Army Questions Rebels Attacks,” Kathmandu Post, August 19, 2003.

[72] Royal Nepali Army News Bulletin, February 28, 2004, [online] http://www.rna.np.html (retrieved February 6, 2004.)

[73] “Government Soldiers Kill 17 Rebels in Nepal,” USA Today, August 18, 2003; “Shocked Leaders Urge Rebels to Return to Talks Table,” Himalayan Times, August 28, 2003.

[74] The Maoists state that they withdrew from the peace talks because of the massacre of its captured combatants at Doramba.  The government, on its part, claims that the Maoists were never serious about negotiations, and simply used Doramba as a pretext for pulling out of the talks.

[75] “On the Spot Inspection and Report of the Investigation Committee: Doramba, Ramechhap Incident,”  National Human Rights Commission, 2060 BS (2003).  See also “Doramba Killings were Cold-Blooded,” Kathmandu Post, September 19, 2003; “Storm over Doramba,” Nepali Times, October 16, 2003.

[76]  “On the Spot Inspection and Report,” NHRC.

[77] ibid.

[78] “Storm over Doramba,” Nepali Times.

[79] Royal Nepal Army Statement as printed in [online] http://www.nepalnews.com (retrieved August 28, 2003.)

[80]  “Storm over Doramba,” Nepali Times.

[81]  “Major Faces Army Court,” The Himalayan Times, March 12, 2004; “RNA Court Punishes Guilty Soldiers,” The Kathmandu Post, March 12, 2004.

[82]  “Major Faces Army Court,” The Himalayan Times.

[83]  Human Rights Watch interview with senior UN official, Kathmandu, March 3, 2004; “Storm over Doramba,” Nepali Times.

[84]  “Major Faces Army Court,” The Himalayan Times.

[85]  Human Rights Watch interview with Kanak Mani Dixit, Kathmandu, March 10, 2004.

[86]  Bertrand Ramcharan, Acting U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights, September 2003.

[87] “Make NHRC Report Public: EU,” Kathmandu Post, September 17, 2003; “EU Calls for Multi-Party Government,” The Telegraph, February 4, 2004.

[88] “Storm over Doramba,” Nepali Times.

[89] Human Rights Watch interviews, Belbhar,villagers, names withheld, March 15, 2004.

[90] Human Rights Watch interviews with two witnesses, names withheld, March 15, 2004.

[91] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 15, 2004.

[92] ibid.

[93] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 15, 2004.

[94]  Human Rights Watch interviews with four witnesses, names withheld, March 15, 2004.

[95] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 13, 2004.

[96] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 13, 2004.

[97] Human Rights Watch interviews, name withheld, March 16, 2004.

[98] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 8, 2004.

[99] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 8, 2004.

[100] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 8, 2004.

[101] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 8, 2004.

[102] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 8, 2004.

[103] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 8, 2004.

[104] Human Rights Watch interviews, names withheld, March 15, 2004.

[105] Even though the house is tiny, the two women claim that they did not see the wounded man enter the house because they were busy cooking.  The house is very dark and the large earthen storage vats obscure the view in the room.

[106] Human Rights Watch interview, names withheld, March 15, 2004.

[107] One U.S. dollar is equal to seventy-five Nepali Rupees (as of September 28, 2004.)

[108] Human Rights Watch interviews, names withheld, March 15, 2004.

[109] Human Rights Watch interview with Karna Bahadur Rasaili, Kavre District, March 4, 2004.

[110] Human Rights Watch interview with Murali Sunuwar, March 5, 2004.

[111] Ibid.

[112] Human Rights Watch interview with Karna Bahadur Rasaili, March 4, 2004.

[113] Human Rights Watch interview with Putali Chulagain, March 4, 2004.

[114] Human Rights Watch interview with Kedar Prasad Chaulagain, March 4, 2004.

[115] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 12, 2004.

[116] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 12, 2004.

[117] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 12, 2004.

[118] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 12, 2004.

[119] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 9, 2004.

[120] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 9, 2004.

[121] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 9, 2004.

[122] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 9, 2004.

[123] Nepal Bar Association Investigative report on Bhiman, September 5, 2003.

[124] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 15, 2004.

[125] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 15, 2004.

[126] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 16, 2004.

[127] ibid. 

[128] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 16, 2004.

[129] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 16, 2004.

[130] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 16, 2004.

[131] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 15, 2004.

[132] Human Rights Watch interview with government official, March 15, 2004.  Another witness also saw the three Maoists blindfolded and with their hands tied in the yard, and later heard five or six shots when the soldiers executed the men.

[133] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 15, 2004.

[134] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 15, 2004.

[135] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 15, 2004.

[136] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 11, 2004.

[137] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 11, 2004.

[138] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 13, 2004.

[139] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 13, 2004.

[140] Human Rights Watch interview, name withheld, March 13, 2004.

[141]  Human Rights Watch interview with six witnesses, names withheld, March 17, 2004.  Human Rights Watch has also received corroborative testimony from a Commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission, who was present for the exhumation of the bodies. 


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