Lekhnath, February 8:

Police handed over skeletons of Chotnath Ghimire and Shekharnath Ghimire of Lamjung’s Ishaneshwor VDC-4 Chisankhu, who were spirited by the then Royal Nepal Army’s Garuda Dal Company in December 2002 and killed, to their families today.

The Ghimires’ skeletons were found buried in a jungle in October last year.

Their last rites will be performed tomorrow in Saurbas jungle at Kaski’s Rupkot, where they were killed, said a relative Gyan Prasad Adhikari. A DNA test report confirmed that they died of army bullets.

Shekharnath’s son Sujit Ghimire said, “We demanded the full report, but the police handed over only skeletons,” he said. The notes given by the Kaski district police office to Sujit stated that Chotnath and Shekharnath were shot in the head. “The DNA report stated that the two were shot in the head and both descended from a common ancestor,” Sujit told this daily.

Inspector at the Kaski district police office Krishna Prasad Pangeni said they are investigating the case. The National Human Rights Commission sent a letter to the DPO a week ago, asking for a copy of the DNA test, but it was not provided.

“We sent the letter a week ago,” head of the commission’s western regional office Achyut Acharya told this daily.