The combatative youth wing formed by the UML to counter the Maoist Young Communist League (YCL) did not yet exist then and Koirala had become joint-secretary of the Free Students´ Union (FSU) Mahendra Morang Multiple Campus chapter on a Nepali Congress (NC)-affiliated Nepal Students Union ticket. [break]
Koirala and his henchmen had come to the office of the local daily ´Udghosh´ and tried to strangle me for writing a news item about the college authorities disconnecting the FSU phone line apparently after Koirala used it for harrassment of the opposite sex. He was let off after making an apology.
That the same Rohit Koirala brutally assaulted journalist Dhakal five years later attests to the crime culture thriving in Biratnagar.
Koirala and Morang Youth Force Chairman Parshuram Basnet, who directed the former to set upon Dhakal, have been involved in criminal doings in Biratnagar under political patronage, thuggery for wresting contracts being their favorite activity.
The duo has been muscling its way into contracts at the District Development Committee (DDC), the municipality and other government bodies on behalf of contractors belonging to their camp. The local administration has refused to file any case against them and let them off under political pressure even when complaints had been registered.
Police have not dared to even touch Basnet after he became an UML insider. Basnet and Koirala have been using their illegal earnings to help bankroll their patrons as well as themselves.
Basnet has become the most powerful underworld don in Biratnagar, merely 15 years after he descended from Charikot, Dolakha and started working in a passenger bus as driver´s help.
This erstwhile taxi driver, who was allowed by the local administration to move about in vehicles with tinted window glass, has been given political protection by the UML and NC at different times. Basnet even invested in the local Aba daily paper along with a local leader of the NC-affiliated Tarun Dal. The daily shut down after publishing for two years.
Basnet entered the criminal world in the course of many gang fights he saw while driving his taxi. He was not affiliated to any party then but became close to the UML through a budding friendship with Girendra Karki, a leader of UML-affiliated Prajatantrik Rastriya Yuva Sangh. He then stopped driving a taxi and started a cabin restaurant with the help of one Manoj Chauhan. Chauhan was later arrested for trafficking a female worker at the restaurant to India, but Basnet was spared through UML influence.
Basnet remained at large for a while but Chauhan got sentenced to jail. This created a rift between the two and Chauhan joined the Maoists after serving his sentence. Meanwhile, Basnet started to threaten contractors after he become a member of the UML´s People´s Volunteers.
Basnet´s group brutally assaulted CPN-ML Morang Deputy Secretary Mahesh Regmi in a dispute over wall graffitti at the Rastriya Banijya Bank near Budhhaat Chowk following the split in the UML. CPN-ML went for legal action against the assailants but Basnet was let off again.
Basnet has been under the patronage of the KP Oli faction in the district leadership following the merger of the UML and CPN-ML. Party insiders claim that central leader Guru Baral, former district secretary Naresh Pokharel and incumbent District Chairman Binod Dhakal are providing political protection to Basnet, who is currently working for contractor Raj Mani Neupane, a member of the finance department of the Morang UML and general secretary of the Contractors´ Association, Morang.
Basnet has been accused of abducting Dushant Poudel--younger brother of rival contractor Deepak Poudel--to secure Neupane a Rs 150 million contract for the Morang-Sunsari Irrigation Project last year.
The Basnet group had attacked Jhalanath Khanal-faction leader and secretary of UML, Biratnagar-6 Pankaj Chhetri inside the district party office four years ago. A homicide case was lodged against Basnet following the attack that took place in the presence of central leader Ashok Rai, but Basnet walked free after a week in police detention, along with a few of his henchmen.
A police source claims that Basnet was caught taking another contractor, Manoj Dhamala, on his vehicle after an abduction around four years ago but he had to be released overnight due to political pressure. “They were not even held in custody after Binod Dhakal and others called up the chief district officer (CDO),” says a police officer who was with the Morang police then.
There have in recent times been many gang fights with other groups, and most frequently with NC-affiliated Avishek Giri, over the landing of contracts. Last week Basnet´s group attacked Giri while he was being taken to the District Court for hearings in a murder case.
Tarun Dal leader Ashok Humagain was attacked inside the DDC premices last year following a dispute over contracts. The Khanal faction has also accused Basnet of putting a pistol to central member of Prajatantrik Rastriya Yuva Sangh Anjana Adhikari inside the district party office last year.
Basnet holds sway in Biratnagar through his group comprising Koirala, Mukesh Budhathoki, Manoj Rai, Lalu Mandal, Bhupal Rai, Bikash Chaudhary, Rabin Thapa, Manoj Chaudhary and others.
Basnet doesn´t get directly involved in criminal acts but unleashes his gang. The police officer says Binod Dhakal exerts pressure not to file case against Basnet, using this ´non-involvement´ as an excuse. Basnet may not have thought twice before having journalist Dhakal attacked because of the appalling record of impunity for attacks on mediapersons in the district.
This reporter was again attacked by one Pritam Mukhiya and two others for not covering their banda in January, 2007. The trio escaped with just an apology. Likewise, Madhesi protestors had encircled and brutally thrashed journalists Shambhu Bhandari,, Bikram Luitel, Mohan Manandhar, Bijaya Pathak and others on February 4, 2007 during the Madhes Movement. A homicide case was lodged against the assailants but they escaped after the government pardoned all atrocities committed during the movement, in the wake of dialogue with the Madhesi parties.
Similarly, editor of Anmol Mani weekly Milan K Raut and his colleagues including Mohan Bhattarai were attacked by one Ishwor Ansu Magar, a school owner, at the weekly´s office premises in Pathari on August 23, 2008. But Magar was only charged under the Public Offense Act and soon let off without any punishment. Journalist Arjun Jamnely Rai of Pathari was threatened by local Maoists and displaced to Biratnagar last February but no action has been taken to date. There have been around two dozen cases of manhandling and threatening of journalists in the past two years alone but no one has been brought to book.
The fact that the UML´s Oli faction has been protecting Basnet was proved beyond doubt when the Morang UML felicitated Basnet and his group Sunday for valor immediately after the court incident involving Giri. That was the day our correspondent Dhakal was attacked. Central leaders Khaga Raj Adhikari and Karna Thapa, who are close to Oli, had reached Biratnagar to felicitate the Basnet group.
“Oli was scheduled to honor them himself but Adhikari and Thapa came instead,” a Moran UML source claims. “This program was organized solely to make the administration aware that Basnet had Oli´s patronage.”
Basnet and UML district leaders had put pressure on office-bearers of the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ), Morang through phone calls urging them not to name Basnet while lodging the homicide case. They argue that Basnet was not involved in the incident, thus showing how desparate the party is to save its blue-eyed boy.
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