Biratnagar, April 23

Police investigating Rina Basnet’s mysterious death took her lover Kamal Prasad Nepal in custody last night.

Morang SP Manoj KC said police had nabbed Nepal, who ran a business in Pathari of Sundar Haraicha Municipality, to probe his relationship with Basnet. Nepal had helped Rina operate a cosmetic shop in Pathari.

Basnet’s body was found without clothes in front of her rented apartment last Saturday morning. SP KC said that though Kamal had called Basnet on her phone throughout the day on Friday, she had not received the call. “Even after Basnet returned to her rented apartment at midnight from a cultural programme on Saturday night, she had not received the repeated calls from Nepal,” said SP KC.

Locals and relatives claimed that Basnet was murdered. Police, however, maintained that they could not say Basnet was killed before the investigation was completed. The body has been kept at Dharan-based BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences for post-mortem. “The facts will be known only after the report,” said police.

Meanwhile, irate locals and relatives staged a protest rally saying that Rina was murdered and the incident was distorted to protect the guilty, in Pathari. Protesters shut down the market place and staged the rally.  They obstructed vehicular movement along the East-West Highway in Pathari for two hours demanding action against the guilty.

Police personnel had used force to clear the obstructed road. SP KC said that police had fired two rounds of tear gas to bring the situation under control.