Sack Minister Sah

The widow and other kin of the late Kashi Nath Tiwari, who was shot dead in Birgunj in broad daylight, have made the grave allegation that they were paid blood money to buy their silence for protecting Minister for Land Reform Prabhu Sah, named in a police investigation as the mastermind behind Tiwari’s murder. The claim by members of the Tiwari family that Joint Secretary at the Ministry of Land Reform, Nagendra Jha, invited them to his residence and paid them eight hundred thousand rupees on behalf of Minister Sah and promised them a meeting with Prime Minister Bhattarai in return for publicly denying Sah’s involvement in Tiwari’s killing, is too serious to be brushed aside.



Their claim that they were promised a meeting with the prime minister and a government job for Tiwari’s widow Babita drags the prime minister himself right into the centre of this whole sordid affair. Prime Minister Bhattarai should immediately sack Minister Sah, form a high-level judicial inquiry into the case and make its findings public if he wishes to redeem his personal credibility, which is already in the line of fire.



Prime Minister Bhattarai has not only acted slowly in the case but there are indications he has used the influence of his office to protect Sah, a longtime confidant, from being legally implicated in the Tiwari murder. Though Parsa district police categorically mentioned Sah as the mastermind in the murder, the district prosecutor’s office dropped his name from the charge-sheet today when it filed a murder case at the district court.



Sources claim that the district prosecutor’s office removed Sah’s name from the charge-sheet under pressure from Attorney General Mukti Pradhan, a Maoist cadre who was appointed to the post recently by Bhattarai.



The prime minister is perhaps ignoring the fact that the Tiwari murder was investigated by one of the most competent and upright police officers in the country, SP Ramesh Kharel. A public icon in his own right, Kharel’s credibility is so high that Prime Minister Bhattarai is now risking his own credibility in allowing party thugs to question the Kharel investigation, its findings, and even its impartiality.



The offer of blood money, which appears to be a fact in the light of circumstantial evidence, has only confirmed that Sah’s hands are indeed stained with Tiwari’s blood and he is acting in desperation to save himself. This incident has now truly mutated into a test-case for the Bhattarai government’s moral credentials and its legacy will be judged by how fairly and promptly it acts on it.



Acquitting Sah and protecting him will not just be a travesty of justice, it will also leave a stain so stark on Prime Minister Bhattarai’s image that he will forever find it hard to be rid of it.

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