By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS
Kathmandu : Nepal’s top human rights body, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Thursday began seeking the help of experts from home and abroad to investigate a site on the outskirts of Kathmandu valley that is suspected to hold the mass grave of nearly 50 people.
The victims were held in secret torture camps and extra judicially executed in May 2003 by a battalion of the country’s army infamous for its human rights abuse during the Maoist insurgency.
“We have asked forensic and crime scene experts to help us investigate the suspected site,” Gauri Pradhan, spokesman of NHRC, told IANS.
“We also need anthropological experts. But since they are not available in Nepal, we have asked the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Nepal to recommend names,” she added.
Four years after 49 people, mostly Maoists, disappeared from the face of the earth, it is now suspected that their last remains lie in a desolate forest about five kilometres from the main entrance of the Shivapuri National Park, located north of Kathmandu.
The 49, including Maoist student leaders, were arrested by soldiers of the Bhairabhnath Battalion of the then Royal Nepalese Army who, during the height of the insurgency, were running secret torture camps in their barracks in Kathmandu where prisoners were kept blindfolded and handcuffed all through their stay.
According to survivors of the camps, 49 people were taken out of the barracks in the dead of the night in May 2003 and were never seen again.
After the fall of King Gyanendra’s government and the declaration of a truce by the Maoists, families of the people who disappeared during the turbulent decade began hunting for their kin.
Maoist student leader and camp survivor Krishna KC said they were finally tipped off about the “mass grave” by a former soldier who in 2003 had been ordered by his superiors to help dispose of the dead bodies.
The bodies of the victims, including women, were taken to Shivapuri and set on fire. Then the last remains were buried.
Acting on the tip off, searching families, officials from Advocacy Forum, a leading rights organisation, and members of the NHRC and OHCHR went to the desolate area Wednesday where a hunt began to yield tattered clothing, burnt wood, plastic sheets, burnt coal and cans of Mobil.
“We have asked the government to seal the area,” Pradhan said. “We have also asked the home and defence ministries to cooperate in finding out if there is a mass grave.”
The Maoists Thursday said about 5,000 people are still missing. An earlier International Crescent of the Red Cross investigation had estimated about 1,000 people are still untraceable.
Nepal’s state media Thursday said about 90 people are suspected to have had “disappeared” from the Bhairabhnath Battalion.