By IANS
Kathmandu : Amid mounting allegations of lawlessness by Nepal’s Maoist guerrillas, a 71-year-old former royalist is making an unusual allegation of horseplay against the rebels.
Bakhat Bahadur Kunwar, who was forced to leave his home in Parbat district in western Nepal because of the communist insurgents, says the rebels have captured his horse, which he said is dearer to him than his seven sons.
At a time there is growing clamour against the Maoists that they have been seizing people’s land, houses and cars, Kunwar’s travail is unusual.
The frail Kunwar, who has diabetes and heart problems, says he bought a white horse for Nepali Rs.40,000 nine years ago since there was no motorable road in his village.
“Sete, my horse, became a part of my life,” he says. “Though my seven sons left me, he stayed with me. I would go to bed listening to the tinkle of the bell round his neck.”
Kunwar, who was a former village chief during the Panchayat time when kings had absolute power and political parties were banned, had to live with Maoist demands since the armed revolt started in 1996.
First they wanted money, then they wanted their soldiers to be fed, and finally Kunwar says the rebels grabbed his house and small shop, forcing him and his wife to go to Kathmandu.
One day, he received a call from a grandson in the village, telling him that the Maoists had made off with his beloved horse.
Kunwar began searching for the missing animal but with no result. Then, about two weeks ago, he saw a copy of a Nepali weekly that had the photograph of Maoist supremo Prachanda on its cover.
Taken by Prachanda’s son Prakash in 2005, when the Maoists were underground and being hunted down by King Gyanendra’s government, the photograph showed the Maoist chief mounted on a handsome white horse.
Kunwar claims that the Maoist chief’s mount is none other than his missing horse. To be sure about the horse’s identity, he even went to the Nepal weekly’s office in Kathmandu for a closer look at the photograph.
The certain septuagenarian is now appealing to have his horse returned.
“I don’t want my land or house back,” he told the weekly. “I’ll be happy if they just return my horse.”
There has been a sea change in Nepal since the days when Prachanda had to remain in hiding in remote areas, travelling secretly through jungles on horseback.
Now his party is a powerful partner in the eight-party government, he is vying to become the future president of Nepal if the country becomes a republic, and travels by aircraft and a Scorpio.
Still it remains to be seen if Kunwar’s humble plea will be met.
There are nearly 1,000 families asking the government to disclose the whereabouts of their kin missing in the course of the decade-old “People’s War”.
But despite a Supreme Court order to the government two months ago to disclose the fate of the missing and compensate the families of those killed by the state, the government is yet to swing into action.