Assassination Attempt on PM’s PA

Expats

Written by Peter Francon

Tuesday, 10 February 2009 08:45

Somebody tried to kill the Prime Minister's Personal Assistant just before 7pm last night. Shakti Bahadur Basnet a politburo member of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and Personal Assistant to the Nepal Prime Minister Puspa Kamal Dahal, was shot at as he returned home.

He was taken to hospital and doctors report that he is now comfortable after they were able to remove a bullet from his thigh. 14 people have today been arrested in connection with the attack. Basnet

Other newspaper reports link last night's attack on Basnet with another (completely dissimilar) attack on a Police Post in the Mid-Western region of Nepal. Political Leaders warn us that this is the work of ‘outsiders' intent on destroying the peace process. The attack in question was carried out by a gang of around 70 armed men who first surrounded and then attacked a remote Police Post with automatic weapons, killing one policeman. The attackers apparently lined up the policemen and gave them all 'a severe thrashing' before disappearing into the jungle.

These kinds of story - and their associated adaptations, are commonplace in Nepal. It becomes an interesting exercise at times to determine which parts of the story are true, which parts are not quite real and those extras that were added by an office-bound newspaper editor. Stories develop over time, with reports of intriguing findings and unlikely connections with other seemingly unsolvable, geographically far-apart, crimes and misdemeanours.

Stories of the death of a journalist in a large town in the south of Nepal recently - supposedly at the hands of political activists, gradually revealed that the young lady was in fact more likely ‘done-in' by her own family-in-law, with a view to laying claim to her property. That she was killed brutally, and that she wrote against the excesses of violent political activists, would certainly have suggested a political motive, but never the less, the incident still hasn't been addressed conclusively by law and order agencies across the country.

Several weeks ago in another quite unrelated attack, a gang of around 200 youths (read Young Communist League) dragged a local man from his home, across the river - back into their territory, and hacked one of his legs off with an axe. Apparently the intransigence of the police and their reluctance to get involved in the case had forced locals to block the main highway to the north. This prevented trucks, buses, cars and motorcycles from travelling to the northern most villages towards the Tibet border, except by way of a 3 hour diversion for several weeks.

A further consequence of the road block was that domestic rubbish could no longer be dumped at the controversial rubbish dump site north of the Kathmandu Valley. For two weeks stinking piles of rubbish festered on the capital's streets, restricting traffic movement and forcing pedestrians to walk in the road with noses buried in handkerchiefs.

The municipal authorities and political leaders finally negotiated a settlement regarding the dumping of rubbish, but not before it got very smelly. It's usual for the locals near the landfill site to make a list of demands for the government; new school, a rmetalled road, electricity, a library, hospitals, airports, the list goes on. The government agrees, hands out a few cash sweeteners, nothing happens and 5 weeks later the locals block the road again. and Kathmandu again sinks into its, now well known cycle of filth.

We've heard no more about the man who lost his leg.

The day before yesterday we read that a number of vehicles were stopped at night on the east-west highway - in the south of the country, the passengers of cars, buses and the drivers of trucks were all robbed of their belongings. The robbers - dacoits as they know in these parts, then torched the vehicles and ran off into the jungle.

In closing I am compelled to report the most abominable act of cruelty, reported in last week's newspapers. Poachers in the southern Chitwan National Park had cut off the horn of a Rhinoceros. Park Wardens and veterinarians attended to the wounded animal as best they could, but not until they had tracked it down in its jungle hiding place. So heartless were the poachers, they had not even bothered to shoot the animal first.

Welcome to the New Nepal.

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