RUPANDEHI, JUNE 9
Tulsipur bench of Butwal High Court has issued a mandamus over a writ petition filed demanding the whereabouts of those disappeared during the Maoist insurgency.
A bench comprising judges Nityananda Pandey and Mamata Khanal issued the order responding to a writ petition filed in the court by Budhu Pasi and Dhan Kumari Tharu on behalf of the families of disappeared people.
Advocates Shiva Prasad Gaudel and Indira Acharya pleaded in favour of the petitioners.
It is said that their repeated calls to the concerned authorities for finding the whereabouts of the disappeared had been largely ignored.
Their earlier effort to file a police case on the International Day of the Disappeared could not be fruitful due to reluctance of the district police office to register the report. With nowhere to go, they decided to knock the door of the court.
Lautu Pasi alias Ram Palat of the then Bodawar VDC-3 (now Ward No 5 of Rohini Rural Municipality) in Rupandehi was arrested in 2002 and subsequently disappeared, according to the petition.
Victim Budhu said although they knocked the door of the police office to file FIR, it did not happen and they eventually reached the court.
Saying he met his elder brother on 7 June 2004 for the last time, Budhu demanded the disclosure of whereabouts of his elder brother at the earliest.
Similarly, it has been oneand-a-half decades since the disappearance of spouse of Dhan Kumari Tharu of Ward No 6 of Siyari Rural Municipality in Rupandehi.
Tharu shared that the writ petition was filed at the court seeking the disclosure of the situation of Kamal, who was made to disappear on 27 August 2005 from the side of the state.
Security personnel in plainclothes had apprehended Kamal from Bansgadhi when he was going to his in-laws' house.
The Comprehensive Peace Accord signed between the then rebel side and the government has mentioned that the whereabouts of disappeared persons should be made public within 60 days after disappearance, but implementation of the agreement is still awaited.
The victim families complained that the Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons had failed to carry out effective work even seven years after its formation.
A version of this article appears in the print on June 10, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
