Kathmandu, May 11

Nepal Police today arrested 150 cadres of Nepal Student Union, the student wing of the main opposition Nepali Congress, who, defying the lockdown, had gathered at various places in Kathmandu to protest the Indian government’s recent inauguration of a link road by to Lipulekh area.

Kathmandu has been seeing various protest programmes for the last couple of days after the Indian government inaugurated a link road to Mansarovar of Tibet in China via Lipulekh region, which lies in Nepali territory.

The arrested includes NSU chair Rajeev Dhungana and general secretaries Urmila Thapaliya, Yubaraj Pandy, Baldev Timalsina, Deepak Bhattarai and Prabhat Dahal and several senior leaders of the NSU.

They were arrested while staging protest from various places of Kathmandu such as Maitighar, Bagbazaar, Bouddha, Baneshwor and Chabahil chowks. Several others were arrested on the way before they could reach the protest venue.

The student leaders also burnt effigy of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the protest.

NSU chair Dhungana, talking to THT from custody, said that they would continue the protest until the government came up with result oriented programmes to bring back Nepali territory. “The government must act promptly and do whatever it can to bring back the land to Nepal or face the wrath of Nepali citizens.”

Similarly, General Secretary Thapaliya said the NSU would continuously raise its voice on the border issue till the government committed to take action to bring the land back. All the arrested were held at Police club in Bhrikutimandap and were released late today.

A version of this article appears in e-paper on May 12, 2020 of The Himalayan Times.