Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, May 16:

Defying a Supreme Court order, the police today arrested Rajendra Rai, a student leader, immediately after his release from the Kathmandu district court premises.

Rai, along with another student leader Rup Narayan Shrestha, was produced before the Kathmandu district court to complete his release procedure as per a recent SC order to the Home Ministry and Kathmandu district administration office to release the two leaders and inform the court about it.

However, Rai was re-arrested from the court premises and was taken to Armed Police Force’s Training Centre in Maharajgunj.

According to lawyers, though the police was trying to re-arrest Shrestha too, lawyers and rights acti-vists successfully managed to elude the police from getting him.

Rai is the former pres-ident and Shrestha is the former vice-president of ANNFSU, the student wing of CPN-UML.

Rai was re-arrested from before a group of hu-man rights activists and journalists. Police even baton charged journalists and lawyers who tried to get Rai free.

Nepal Bar Association and FNJ condemned the police action to defy the court order.

“It is an violent attack on the independence of judiciary,” president of Nepal Bar Association Shambhu Thapa said. He said NBA would launch protest programmes against the police action tomorrow.