The police and the ANSA blame each other for provoking Friday’s firing that led to deaths of five people and many others hurt. The police had gone to evict the squatters only after an all-party meeting asked it to free the forest area from encroachers. The Maoists had objected to the plan. Police said the clash started only after Maoist combatants from Gorunge satellite camp under the Maoist army’s 7th Division in Kailali prevented the squatters from vacating the place after the police asked them to leave. It is useless to ask UNMIN, the special UN peace mission in Nepal, to confirm whether the Maoist combatants had indeed left the Gorunge camp. They have demonstrated in recent times that they try to hush up such incidents and this shows what kind of monitoring they are doing of the Maoists combatants.
What happened during the clash was shameful and horrendous. Armed encroachers (with sticks, axes and spears) caught hold of policeman Padam Aer and gouged his eyes before beating him to death. They also hit police sub-inspector Kalyan Singh Mahar on head with an axe. He is now fighting for his life in a hospital in Lucknow, India. This is a serious incident. It needs to be probed by a team headed by a sitting judge of at least Appellate Court rank.
We are dismayed that the Maoist leadership which has already shifted the blame on the government keeps using the innocent people for its political gains. You simply cannot encroach on government or private land and distribute it to the landless. Period. Reports of intensified extortions by Maoist cadres to help their “civilian supremacy” campaign are pouring in from all over the country. They have started seizing food grains too, the latest of such incidents being reported from Nawalparasi. These are all atrocious and condemnable acts. We ask the Maoist leadership, yet again, to rein in their cadres. They must also shoulder blame for the deaths in Baliya.
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