The Pushpa Kamal Dahal government demonstrated a “double standard” when investigating the 2007 massacre in Rautahat district.
In the event that successive governments did not take the initiative to investigate the massacre, the relatives of the victims started a series of protests in the vicinity from July 29. Six days of agitation, the Prime Minister called protesters to a meeting on Friday. At Saturday’s meeting, Dahal assured protesters he would form a panel headed by the interior minister to dialogue and bring to justice.
“The prime minister assured us that he would form a committee to dialogue with us,” Sagar Upadhyay, the wife of Narmadeshwar, who was murdered in the massacre, told the Post Rup. “He said the government would look into the matter and bring justice to all the families of the victims.” Upadhyay, who is also the coordinator of the Committee for the Fight for the Victims of the Gaur Massacre, said the prime minister had asked them to sit down to negotiate and withdraw their objections. “We declined because this time we needed to see some action. Many of the assurances in the past were mere words,” she added.
However, Dahal, who had promised victims to investigate the incident 15 years ago, ignored the recommendations of the National Human Rights Commission for an investigation. Although the government was legally obligated to follow the recommendations of the constitutional committee, the Dahal administration ignored it. After years of investigation, on 7 January the commission asked government agencies, through the Prime Minister’s Office, to investigate the incident and take action against Rastriya party chairman Janata Upendra Yadav and 129 people. other related to the case. Under the commission’s law, governments must comply with their recommendations or respond in writing to the human rights watchdog within three months, explaining why the agency’s recommendations cannot be implemented.
Seven months since the commission’s decision, the government has neither abided by it nor has it explained to the commission why its recommendation wasn’t implemented.
“There is no response from the government despite our repeated concerns. We are preparing to write again within a few days,” Shyam Babu Kafle, the investigation chief at the commission, told the Post.On March 21, 2007, as many as 27 individuals associated with the CPN (Maoist) were brutally killed, with another 115 injured in the incident.
In its recommendations, the commission had asked the government to proceed with the investigation of the complaint lodged at the Rautahat District Police Office on May 11, 2007 and report to it on the progress made, every three months. It also suggested providing Rs300,000 to each victim’s family while also offering free treatment to the injured and seeking details of all that was lost in the incident. But it was to no avail.The constitutional rights watchdog had concluded that the killings of more than two dozen people were orchestrated and that both the then Madheshi Janadhikar Forum Nepal and CPN (Maoist) were aware of possible violence when they chose the same venue for their rallies.
Concluding its investigation 15 years after the incident, the commission had also directed the government to take departmental actions against then-Rautahat district police chief Yogeshwar Romkhami; then-chief district officer Madhav Prasad Ojha; Superintendent of Police Ram Kumar Khanal; deputy superintendent of Armed Police Force Dharmananda Sapkota; and sub-inspector Kamakhya Narayan Singh. If they are no longer in service, it asked the authorities concerned not to give them another opportunity in government service.