Although various political parties had declared banda, the defiant locals were preparing for a full-fledged celebration ignoring the warnings of the banda enforcers. Some were drawing the map of Nepal on the street while others were setting up tents.A group of banda enforcers arrived at the Railway Chowk on bikes in the evening. They mistreated the locals and threatened them to close their shops. Just when a few shops had started to shut down, a banda enforcer pelted stone at a book store and broke its window pane. Agitated by the incident, locals retaliated by pelting stones and used batons against the banda enforcers.
One of the banda enforcers, Kumar Darnal, was critically injured after being hit by stones while he was on the run. Darnal, who is the district secretary of Federal Youth Association Sunsari, a sister organization of the Federal Socialist Forum, is currently undergoing treatment at the emergency department of BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences.
According to Subash Rai, proprietor of the book store, locals became agitated when the banda enforcers used foul words against them. "Everyone started to retaliate when they broke the store's window pane," he informed.
Following the incident, some district-level leaders of the Federal Socialist Forum and Federal Limbuwan Party reached the incident site. Locals attempted to attack them as well. They backtracked when the locals started chanting slogans against banda stating that the Railway Chowk is a banda-free area, according to eye-witnesses.
However, the injured protestor Darnal claimed that they were peacefully enforcing banda when the Railway Chowk locals attacked them. "When a student leader, Santosh Kurungmang, pulled down a shutter, the locals started pelting stones and broke the window pane," he said.
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