Right till the end of his life, Ram Lal Shrestha made the rounds of police stations and other offices to find out if there had been any progress in investigations into the murder of his son Hemanta and daughter-in-law Anjali at Rani Bari, Lazimpat in Kathmandu some 11 years ago. He died without a single clue as to who was or were the culprits.[break]
According to the family of the deceased, Ram Lal was very hopeful in the initial months after the murders that the criminals would be identified and duly punished.
But as time passed by, the investigating officers turned reluctant and the 16 separate reports submitted by different high-level police officers were rarely opened, according to members of the Shrestha family.
“We are tired of trying to follow up on the case and visiting police stations because the police seem ignorant and reluctant to work on older cases,” Laba Shrestha, brother of the deceased, told Republica.
The plight of the Shrestha family is representative of myriad cases of crime which go uninvestigated for years. According to Nepal Police Headquarters, there are over 100 case investigations that are pending since years back.
From July 2009 to December 2012 alone, police have been investigating more than 60 cases, including 26 related to murder, according to records provided by police headquarters.
Nepal Police Spokesperson DIG Nawa Raj Silwal said, “Once a cases gets old the trail goes cold and it becomes somewhat difficult to continue further investigations. But it is not true that police simply neglect the older cases.”
Although IGP Kuber Singh Rana had announced investigations into serious crimes like murder, no proper initiative has been taken so far, said a highly placed official at police headquarters, requesting anonymity. As time passes, the evidence, eyewitness accounts and other facts collected during preliminary investigations will go missing.
SSP Bijaylal Kayastha, chief of Metropolitan Police Crime Division, said most cases related to murder are closed after 20 years, but if someone appeals for the reopening a particular case, investigations are initiated again.
Besides the case of the Shrestha couple, the murders of Chakra Bahadur Thapa of Luvu, Lalitpur, Pranita Sunar of Dhobighat, Amar Lama of Kirtipur, Arjun Ahikari of Mahankaal, five members of a single family at Badikhel, Amar Budhathoki of Koteshwor, Hem Lama of Gangabu, Kuber Karki of Gothatar, Bharat Raj Shakya of Jaishidewal, Prem Gurung of Balaju, Maniram Raut of Kapan, Diwakar Chanda of Lalitpur, Supreme Court Justice Rana Bahadur Bam and Faizal Ahmad of Kathmandu are some of the murder mysteries to date in Kathmandu Valley.
A few weeks ago, the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB), the national investigation agency that aims to wipe out organized crime, began investigations into some cases including the Bam, Faizal and Chanda cases and the Chori Maiya Maharjan case. In most of these cases the police are clueless and just categorize them as ´organized crime´.
Police interrogated hundreds of people in connection with the murders, produced a report running into hundreds of pages and claimed to have made ´achievements in the investigation´. However, justice still eludes the families of the deceased, said Shrestha, kin of the deceased Hemant.
On the other hand, investigation officers say that modern crime detection has become very scientific and technical in the last few years.
DNA fiber analysis and supercomputers are just some of the modern tools used by law enforcement to detect and convict the guilty but these facilities have been lacking here, SSP Kayastha said.
"We expected a separate cell to be opened to look into murder cases that have been pending but this has not been possible so far,” Kayastha said.
Keeping in mind the open border and increase in organized crime in recent days, we have been working to resolve the problem regarding older cases, spokesperson Silwal said.
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