Kathmandu, February 1:

Murder case of Ram Hari Shrestha has been forwarded to the Supreme Court with a dispute whether the accused in the case should be prosecuted in detention or not.

A division bench of Justices Kalyan Shrestha and Bharat Raj Upreti have begun the hearing of the case after a petition was filed in the Supreme Court, challenging the Hetauda Appellate Court order that upheld the Chitwan District Court order to detain him to proceed the case.

The SC called to submit the case before the apex court to examine the lower courts’ orders in relation to keeping the main accused Govinda Batala in judicial custody in order to proceed the case.

After a petition was registered seeking the apex court intervention to release him overturning the order of the Hetauda Appellate Court and Chitwan, the Supreme Court today sought the case-file from the lower courts. After the Hetauda Appellate Court upheld the Chitwan District Court order to send Batala in judicial custody to proceed the case, a petition was filed as per the Section 17 of the Court Procedure Chapter of the Country’s Code 1963. On behalf of Batala, a petition was filed seeking his release for the prosecution of the case without bail.

Businessman Shrestha was arrested and killed in the Shaktikhor cantonment of the Maoists’

People’s Liberation of Army. After being arrested, Batala is in detention in order to prosecute the case as Keshav Adhikari and Ganga Bahadur Thapa are entitled to co-accused in the case but they are still at large.