Conflict-related psychological trauma is a worldwide phenomenon, and its presence in Nepal cannot be brushed aside given the increasing numbers of indiscriminate killings of innocent people by individual soldiers and policemen. A decade-long Maoist insurgency may be expected to have had a telling effect on the psychological health of most members of the warring factions, and, more importantly, on the innocent millions of Nepalis. The

INSEC chairman, Subodh Pyakurel, raises a pertinent point when he suggests that those wielding the state’s weaponry have not remained untouched by this malaise. Though his claim is yet to be medically attested, one thing is crystal clear. The instances of security personnel resorting to firing on non-combatants such as party cadres, rights defenders, school officials and innocent civilians are definitely on the rise. The recent gunning down of the NHRC employee, Dayaram Pariyar, in Janakpur is a case in point. The gruesome massacre at Nagarkot by a soldier is still afresh in public memory.

Gross violations of the kind as regards human rights and international laws call for investigation into the psychology of those carrying arms, apart from bringing the guilty to book through court-martial or by civilian court. More important is the need to know what provoked the rogue policemen or armymen to act the way they did? The monitoring bodies will make more sense if they evolved a reliable mechanism to detect more of such cases. The possibility of mental illnesses of these wayward security personnel should be properly tested and corrective action taken like providing medical help, setting up counselling centres and denying them the opportunity to bear arms. Supposing there were no presence of psychological problems, the situation would become all the more alarming in that it would then suggest that security men with normal faculty can stoop to such brutalities.