Nepal's streets filled in September 2025 because young people were tired of a state that acted as though the law was optional for those in authority. The government that rose from that anger promised accountability, and it is fair to ask whether it is keeping its own promise.
The most visible test came in late September this year. Former Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher Rana was taken into police custody at midnight and released about twelve hours later. Opposition parties demanded that the government explain in Parliament why he was taken into custody. The explanations offered so far do not add up. Police cited a security threat, yet they have not said what the threat was or what was done about it during his detention. Meanwhile, the government has denied arresting him and says he was moved for his safety. Officials cannot say both that a man was protected and that nothing needs explaining, while also keeping him from the National Human Rights Commission. Representatives of the Commission were prevented from meeting him.
The constitutional rule here is not complicated. Article 20 requires that an arrested person be told the grounds of arrest, be allowed to consult a lawyer, and be brought before a judicial authority within 24 hours. If a person cannot walk out of a room, he is detained, whatever the room is called. "Protective custody" appears nowhere in the Constitution or the Muluki Criminal Procedure Code. If the government believes it has such a power, it should name the statute and let Parliament and the courts test it.
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Nor is Rana an isolated case. An opposition chief whip told the House that several former prime ministers and other prominent figures had been detained and later released since the government was formed, and asked the government to explain the reasons. A pattern of detaining and releasing political figures without clear explanation is exactly what a rule-of-law government should avoid. It looks like punishment by procedure: the arrest itself is the sanction, and the law is applied afterwards, if at all.
The courts are already asking the obvious question. On 30 September, the Supreme Court ordered the authorities to give the legal basis and reasons for the detention of Durga Prasai after a habeas corpus petition filed by his wife. The government should note that it was a citizen's petition, not the state's own diligence, that prompted this. In July, the Supreme Court issued habeas corpus declaring the detention of former UML lawmaker Laxmi Mahato Koiri illegal and ordered his release. A government confident of its lawfulness does not need the Supreme Court to teach it the 24-hour rule.
Fairness requires saying what the record does not show. The courts have not found every detention illegal. In April, the Supreme Court declined to issue habeas corpus for KP Sharma Oli and Ramesh Lekhak, holding that keeping them in judicial custody after court-approved extensions during the investigation could not be called contrary to the law. Prasai, too, was held after the Kathmandu District Court permitted three days of police custody. People accused of serious wrongs should be investigated, and the violence of the Gen Z movement demands real accountability. No one is arguing that powerful figures should be above the law.
That is precisely the point. The reason to insist on procedure is that accountability achieved by shortcuts is not accountability. A remand order obtained after an arrest does not retroactively justify the arrest. A commission's report is a recommendation, not a charge sheet. And a court's approval of remand tells us the paperwork was in order, not that the arrest had a sound basis in the first place. Oli's wife made this argument to the Court: that detention based only on an inquiry body's recommendation is unlawful. The Court did not rule on it, so the question remains open. A government confident in its case should want it settled, not avoid it.
There is also a historical irony that the government should feel. Many of today's political leaders have been detained arbitrarily themselves. Nepali Congress president Gagan Thapa was re-detained under a 90-day preventive detention order in 2005, immediately after the Supreme Court deemed his earlier detention illegal. A generation that rose against such practices should not be repeating their logic.
What would a government serious about justice do? It would publish the legal basis for each detention of a public figure, promptly and in writing. It would let lawyers and the Human Rights Commission reach detainees without delay. It would answer Parliament directly on the Rana matter, instead of leaving conflicting statements in the air. It would also publish figures on arrests, remand and habeas petitions, so the public can judge whether detention is the exception it should be.
Prime Minister Balendra Shah's government asks the country to trust that it is different from its predecessors. Trust is earned by conduct, and the first test comes on the night someone is taken from his home. The movement that brought this government to power was asking one thing of the state: act within the law. The government should answer the question its own supporters would have asked a year ago about any other government: Under what law?
The author is pursuing LLB, Symbiosis Law School.
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