RAUTAHAT, AUGUST 13
He was arrested just a few days ago after a decade of hiding and then presented to the court just yesterday, and the accused murderer was released today.
National wrestler Upendra Das Bairagi was shot in his head and killed while walking on the road near Gaur Municipality's Karmachari Milan Kendra at around 8:00pm on the evening of 7 July 2011. Bairagi's murder seemed to be premeditated given the fact that the murder took place during a power outage.
The slain wrestler had won a bronze medal for the country during the Eighth South Asian Games.
As regards the murder, the victim's family had filed an FIR against five persons. Of them, three persons were arrested and produced at the court on 17 May 2018.
The court had then remanded all three to judicial custody.
Two years later, they were absolved of the charge and then released.
Of the accused, Sonafi Lal Paswan of Dewahi Gonahi-3 was arrested from Gaur Municipality-5 just on Wednesday and then presented to the court yesterday. Just two days after he was arrested, he was released on a normal date today.
The victim's kin, while commenting on the release of the accused murder, said the court's decision to release the accused murderer on a normal date has dashed their hopes for justice.
"Court's decision to release a person involved in a crime as grave as a murder on a normal date has left us distraught. The court's today's decision to release the murderer just days after in another similar case the murderer of a priest was released on a bail suggests that there is some sort of setting behind the scene," they said.
Just a few days ago, the court had released the mastermind of the murder of Hanuman temple's priest Shreeram Sah of Madhav Narayan Municipality on a bail of 200,000 rupees.
A version of this article appears in the print on August 14 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
