Lalitpur, September 1:

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) suspects most of the persons disappeared by the state and the non-state sides have already been killed.

NHRC’s spokesperson Gauri Pradhan, after studying the complaints that the commission had received, said the human rights body came to know that most of the disappeared persons have already been killed. “Investigations have revealed that both the state and the non-state sides had detained people without following the minimum standard of the rule of law and had killed them saying that they died during encounters,” he added.

He said that the NHRC could not come up with a comprehensive report on the status of disappeared people because of the lack of cooperation by the state and the then rebel party, the CPN-Maoist.

“The information provided by the state was incomplete and the CPN-Maoist has not provided any bit of information so far,” he said. He also accused the Nepal Army of not cooperating with the NHRC during the investigation.

Out of 2,240 people disappeared by the state, the status of 1,427 people has already been made public while the whereabouts of 671 are still unknown. Similarly, of the 1,059 people disappeared by the CPN-Maoist, 739 were made public, 21 were killed and the whereabouts of 299 people are still unknown, according to NHRC.