High Court upholds Kali Bahadur Kham's detention in murder case

KATHMANDU: The Patan High Court’s Hetauda bench has ordered the continued detention of Kali Bahadur Kham for trial in a murder case.

On Friday, a joint bench of judges Shanta Sedhai Sapkota and Merina Shrestha upheld the Chitwan District Court’s earlier decision, ordering Kham’s detention pending trial.

Kham, who was arrested in Kathmandu on April 2, was initially ordered into pre-trial detention by the Chitwan District Court on April 5.

Kham’s legal team challenged this decision, filing a writ petition at the Patan High Court. However, the Patan High Court’s Hetauda bench has now upheld the order for his detention.

Senior advocate Ramnarayan Bidari represented Kham, while Senior advocate Keshav Prasad Kafle and advocates Madan Dahal, Apsara Basnet, and Mohan Dhakal argued against him.

Kham, a former commander of the People’s Liberation Army of the then CPN-Maoist, is accused of murdering Ramhari Shrestha of Koteshwar.

Shrestha’s body was found in the Narayani River on May 10, 2008.

The police investigation concluded that Shrestha was killed during an inquiry into a robbery of weapons and Rs 1.7 million in cash from the contact office of the ‘Third Division’ of the People’s Liberation Army, located in Shrestha’s rented house in Koteshwar.

According to Shrestha’s family, Maoist fighters abducted him from Koteshwar on April 27, 2008 and tortured him at their Shaktikhor base. After Shrestha’s body was discovered, his wife, Ramila, filed a formal complaint accusing the Maoist fighters of kidnapping and murdering her husband.

Kham is also a central committee member of the CPN (Maoist Center).