KATHMANDU, JULY 02
Police have arrested 15 people, including the ward chair of Pakhribash Municiplaity, on the charge of vandalising furniture of a hall of Pakhribash Municipality in Dhankuta.
Police nabbed Ward Chair Sovit Niraula, on the charge of vandalising chairs and windowpanes and manhandling at a municipal assembly of Dhankuta's Pakhribash Municipality yesterday.
Disgruntled with the budget ceiling, Ward Chair Niraula had resorted to vandalising chairs and windowpanes on June 24. A case was filed against 15 people, including ward chair Niraula, with the police, said SP Nakul Pokhrel.
Niraula, who went out of contact for some days, had surrendered to the police yesterday.
Municipality Mayor Birkha Bahadur Rai said that property worth Rs 0.5 million was damaged in the incident.
Ward Chair Niraula said that his ward was discriminated in budget allocation as he was close to Madhav Kumar Nepal faction of the CPN-UML. The mayor and other representatives are close to UML's establishment faction.
The arrested people are cadres of the CPN-Maoist Centre and Nepali Congress.
The opposition parties accused the mayor of registering the false case against their cadres.
Citing failure to maintain law and order, the then CDO was transferred to the Home Ministry. It is learnt that the mayor and the CDO had had verbal spat as CDO refused to send the police as per mayor's demand to the incident site.
Four parties have taken to the streets demanding scrapping of the case, said Nepali Congress Dhankuta Secretary Bijay Santoshi Rai.
A version of this article appears in the print on July 3, 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
