ROLPA: It has been four long years since the Maoists joined mainstream politics, but injuries of people caught between the two warring sides then remain unhealed.

The wounds Khim Bahadur Bika of Liwang-5 received all over his body in a bomb detonated by the Maoists targeting the police seem still fresh. Liwang is a remote village in Rolpa where the Maoists had begun their war.

It was mid January, 2000. A hale and hearty boy, Khim Bahadur was headed for the market to get for himself a pen and a notebook, but as fate would have it, he was hit by a bomb and he returned home with several injuries and his body covered in blood.

Since then, neither the wounds in his body nor the blow he received on his mental health have healed. Moreover, the incident has affected his entire family and the villagers around him.

Suntali, Khim Bahadur’s mother, said: “Since the incident, we have never experienced peace; tears fill our eyes every time we look at our son.”

“We had hoped a lot from

the Maoist government as

they had promised to work for

the poor, but no one helped

us,” she lamented.

According to Nanda Bahadur Gharti, a local teacher and a witness to the 2000 incident, the Maoists threw the bomb at policemen who had come to the area for patrolling. “But the bomb hit Khim Bahadur who was returning from the market; he was injured and fell on the ground in a pool of blood,” he said.

Khim Bahadur, a second grader then, was just seven years old. At 17 now and the only son of his parents, he is bed-ridden and cannot walk and speak.

“His condition never improved even though he underwent

tretment at a hospital in Kathmandu,” Khim Bahadur’s father Rudra said, adding: “One of

his kidneys was stolen while

he was undergoing treatment in the Bheri Zonal Hospital in Nepalgunj. We learnt of the stolen kidney only when when a doctor told us of it in the Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu.”

Rudra said that though the government had promised an aid of Rs 90,000, he never got the cash.

After the incident, Khim Bahadur’s mother gave birth to

eight daughters hoping for

the second son.

Rudra also lamented the fact that he has to support his

family by working as a porter in the district headquarters, as he had to sell all plots of land and property he owned for the treatment of his son.

“We have become landless now and I must work as a daily wage earner, otherwise my family wont be able to get two square meals a day,” he added.

Human rights activist Ghanashyam Acharya said the local government had not done anything despite their frequent requests to provide relief for Khim Bahadur’s family.

“The war is long over, but neither the Maoists nor the

present government led by Madhav Kumar Nepal is helping the family,” he said.