Rekha Shrestha

Kathmandu, January 4:

For the first time, Supreme Court (SC) justices, including Chief Justice Govinda Bahadur Shrestha, and Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) generals, including chief of the army staff, Pyar Jung Thapa, held discussions at the RNA headquarters on current situation of the country yesterday. The meeting lasted for two hours. The RNA’s legal department had invited attorney-general Mahadev Prasad Yadav, registrar and spokesperson of the SC, Shree Prasad Pundit and Dr Ram Krishna Timilsina, for the discussion. A few months back, the army chief and other generals had gone to SC to clarify the RNA’s commitment to uphold SC verdicts and protect human rights. “The meeting was organised, as the army general had wished to express that forces’ commitment to protection of human rights,” a judge told this daily. “The army also wished the justices to know about the military operations.”

While the RNA’s adjutant general Amar Pant had expressed the Army’s commitment to protect human rights, a senior official of the RNA Valley Command had briefed the judges on the security situation across the country. Justices are learnt to have responded “positively” to the meeting and the army’s gesture.

“The meeting was held in a cordial atmosphere,” said a general, who didn’t divulge details, saying that “the issue might turn sensitive unnecessarily.” However, it is learnt that the Army’s objective of holding such an interaction was to convince legal eagles about the RNA’s commitment to respect human rights and create a better understanding between the SC and the forces. “Since the army is in the field and also in the process of learning legal procedures in various matters, such an interaction was necessary,” said another army general.

It may be noted that the RNA was earlier alleged several times for not obeying the SC’s order on habeas corpus cases. Army officials said that there had been problems in matters like obeying habeas corpus orders due to the lack of understanding about legal procedures in the past, but now things were improving.

Meanwhile, the army today claimed to have foiled a Maoist plan to create terror in the valley. It displayed 10 Chinese pistols, 14 magazines and 103 bullets, a shotgun and two magazines of Self Loading Rifle and raw materials needed to make bombs at the RNA headquarters.