‘Justice is dying in Nepal. Let’s save it!’

The judiciary “which was not constitutionally independent but was independent in practice during the Panchayat system, and which is constitutionally independent today but not independent in practice” has rapidly turned into an instrument of privilege, rather than a guardian of the people's trust.   “Justice is dying in Nepal. This is substantiated by various reports prepared by the very justices of the Supreme Court and verdicts on several cases. Today, we have justices who prevent the filing of a case against former PM Madhav Kumar Nepal, who is implicated by the police in the infamous Lalita Niwas land grab case. We have judges who quashed the writ petition against Lila Ballabh Adhikari, the former Koshi Province Minister accused of attempting to traffic Nepalis to Japan. We have judges who validated the then-Oli government’s controversial decision to make 52 appointments to various constitutional bodies, by postponing hearing on the writ petitions filed against those appointments. We have judges who quash the petition against the donation of land worth millions of rupees by controversial businessmen to the parties in power. And we have judges who keep postponing the hearing on cases against powerful politicians.”