Dhangadi, October 1

Nepali Congress-aligned Nepal Student Union today enforced closure of educational institutions in Kanchanpur demanding that person(s) involved in the rape and murder of Nirmala Panta of Bhimdatta Municipality be arrested.

NSU had called the shutdown of educational institutions as police failed to book the culprits even 68 days after  the incident.

All the educational institutions pulled down their shutters. School and college students had to return home as they were not informed about the shutdown in advance.

NSU central member Kailash Chand accused the government of trying to give immunity to the guilty. Chand said his union would declare a series of protest programmes to press the government to book the guilty immediately.

Meanwhile, the relay hunger strike launched by women rights activists continued for the third day today in Kanchanpur. They have been staging relay-hunger strike demanding that the report submitted to the government by the high-level probe committee be made public as soon as possible.

Civil Struggle Committee led by Mina Bhandari had started the relay hunger strike at Chautari of Mahendranagar of Bhimdatta Municipality last Saturday. Bhandari said they would continue with the hunger strike until their demands were addressed. Nirmala Panta of Bhimdatta Municipality was raped and murdered on July 26. Panta, who had left home to do homework at a friend’s house, was found dead in a sugarcane field the next day.

Different probe committees have been formed to investigate the incident. However, they have failed to reach any conclusion. The incident became even more mysterious after the DNA reports of suspended SP Dilliraj Bista and prime suspects in the case — Bista’s son Kiran and the mayor’s nephew Aayush Bista — did not match with the DNA found in Nirmala’s vaginal swab.

Earlier, the DNA report of Dilip Singh Bista, who was presented as the culprit by the then Kanchanpur police chief SP Bista, also did not match the DNA profile of Nirmala Panta.