KATHMANDU/BIRATNAGAR, Sept 6: Police on Saturday arrested Ram Prasad Mainali, the chief of underground outfit Nepal Defense Army (NDA) that was involved in religious extremism and was responsible for the highest number of crimes after the peace process with the Maoists began in Nepal. [break]
Mainali has led the NDA that carried out score of bombings within three years of its establishment. It has killed at least seven persons. The group is reportedly backed by Hindu extremist groups in India.
The NDA carried out the explosion at a Catholic Church in Lalitpur on May 22, 2009, and at a mosque in Biratnagar on March 29, 2008, leaving three persons dead in each bombing. It also killed the principal of a school in Biratnagar last year. Most recently, it set off a bomb at Nepali Congress central office on August 11. Mainali, a former Maoist, had also bombed the Maoist central office.
Mainali was also arrested two years ago, but was released on bail. A DSP-led eight-member special task force mobilized by the Nepal Police´s Crime Investigation Department and assisted by police´s local units arrested Mainali from Sharanamati of Jhapa on Saturday evening.
After the deadly explosion at the Assumption Church, police had intensified hunt for Mainali. Interpol, at the request of Nepal Police, had issued a Red Corner notice against Mainali.
To execute the explosion at the church, he had used a 27-year-old brainwashed woman, Sita Thapa Shrestha, who is now in judicial custody.
Morang police, which also has cases against Mainali, made Mainali public together with NDA Morang chief Tribhuvan Yadav on Sunday afternoon and sent Mainali to Kathmandu in the evening. Mediapersons were not allowed to ask questions to Mainali.
According to SP Devendra Subedi, Chief of Morang District Police Office, two pistols and ammunition, over a dozen Nepali and Indian mobile SIM cards, NDA´s warning letters and clothes used for disguise were recovered from Mainali.
Mainali, a permanent resident of Govindapur, Morang, had started underground criminal activities after forming NDA in Gorakhpur, India, after Nepal was declared a secular state. He also lobbied for monarchy with support from many royalists and ex-army officials, according to his statement recorded by the police, before he was arrested with lethal weapons and explosives in Kathmandu two years ago.
After being released on bail, he accelerated his criminal spell with declared objective of disrupting the Constituent Assembly elections. Before and after the elections, the NDA set off at least four bombs in the capital. It had bombed the Chhoti Jame Masjid in Sarochiya of Biratnagar just 12 days before the CA election.
Mainali, who has a wife and two daughters, had been using many pseudo-names -- Gopal Mainali, Pariwartan Giri, Phadindra and Bhaikaji Shrestha -- to evade arrest. Once, he had even faked his death to bluff the police.
Security agencies consider him an insidious threat to peace-building and harmony in the society with his clout as a criminal and a religious extremist. As he states in his statement to the police, he formed NDA during a convention of Bishwa Hindu Parisad in Gorakhpur with inspiration from extremist Hindu leaders from India, and arranged buying weapons using his previous connections as a Maoist. He once told in an interview to a weekly that he had some 15,000 Dharmasenas (warriors for religion).
Ranabir Sena chief also arrested
The police on Sunday arrested Binod Pandey, president of the underground armed group Ranabir Sena, from Biratnagar. According to the police, Pandey, who was on the most wanted list of criminals, would be made public at a press conference on Monday.
Ranabir Sena has been involved in extortion, blasts and other criminal activities in Jhapa, Morang, Sunsari and Kathmandu.
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