Braving the scorching heat, he and his son Rajan, 21, participated in the demonstrations every single day during the uprising of 2006.
Cycling home in the evening after participating for hours in demonstrations at district headquarters Chandragadi on April 19, Kedar heard that one Rajan Ghimire was killed in gunfire that day.[break]
His heart sank and he had a sense of foreboding.
He had participated actively in the demonstrations that day and saw dozens of clashes between protestors and security personnel, but he was completely in the dark about casualty figures.
The firing had sent shockwaves through the region. Giri, accompanied by his friends, reached Kendramod along the way and found everybody talking about the incident.
He was dog-tired now and kept on pedaling homewards; he was not in any mood to inquire further about the gunfire incident. All that was on his mind was a nice meal with his family and a good sleep.
"On my way home, I heard many names of the injured and martyred in the demonstration," Giri said recalling that black day.
A group was listening to the radio at Garamuni along the way. Giri and his friends stopped to take in the news bulletin.
And the news left him stunned; his worst fears had come true. The name of the deceased was not Rajan Ghimire as he had heard earlier, but Rajan Giri, his own son. Tears began flowing from his eyes.
"I could not think at all; I felt as if the ground under my feet had collapsed. We were together in the morning, and he was no more by evening," says Giri gloomily, his mind vacillating between past and present.
The father and son had left the house in the morning to participate in the demonstrations in Chandragadi. The district headquarters was already teeming with protestors. Rajan left his father and joined his friends. In the heat of the protests, they soon lost contact.
Within an hour, police baton-charged the protestors and Rajan sustained a minor injury to his left leg. "After receiving medical treatment, he insisted on joining the protests again and soon he was at the forefront," remembers Rajan´s neighbor Pushpa Ghale, who also participated in that fateful day´s demonstrations.It was midday and the sun blazed down mercilessly. But the protests did not slack off. They only went on swelling, with thousands from the rural areas flocking the district headquarters.
Luckily, Giri senior came across his son at Trade Union Chowk in front of the District Administration Office, at around 1 p.m, and exchanged a few words. "Pa, the sun is blazing. Take a rest in the shade," Rajan told his father, and the two then parted, never to meet again.
Before returning home, Giri looked for his son but he was nowhere to be seen. "I thought he would return with his friends. But alas, he was already gone for ever," says Giri, who is president of the NC Ghailadubba unit.
The demonstration was to begin at 11 a.m. that day. But a noisy crowd of tens of thousands had already gathered at district headquarters before 10 a.m., and they started demonstrating.
At around 1 p.m. a group of young demonstrators was pushing their way to the District Administration Office, breaking through a human wall of security. All of a sudden, the patience of the Nepal Army personnel ran out and they opened fire. Rajan and one Suraj Biswas collapsed, and dozens of others were seriously injured. Rajan succumbed to a bullet to his right abdomen. He breathed his last while being taken to hospital in an ambulance.
The security personnel claimed they pulled the trigger in self-defense as the protestors had fired at them first. However, volunteers of the Nepal Red Cross say plainclothes police and security personnel started firing ruthlessly at the demonstrators from two sides.
"The plainclothes security personnel suddenly went on a shooting spree," says Lokraj Dhakal, president of Nepal Red Cross, Jhapa. "Rajan and Suresh fell to the ground immediately after gunshots were heard," he says.
According to him, Rajan was shot in front of the district police office, just meters from Trade Union Chowk.
An activist of the Nepal Student Union in Jhapa, Rajan had attended grade 11 at Patan Campus in the capital and was studying in grade 12 at Kankai College, Jhapa. According his mother Meera, Rajan felt uncomfortable in the capital, and decided to study back in his home district. The decision was to lead to his martyrdom.
A lifesize statue of Rajan is being erected near the family´s house in Ghailadubba. Meera is proud of her son´s martyrdom, but cannot help bursting into tears whenever she reaches the statue site. Her son is no more, but memories of him endure.
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