A group of unidentified people stormed in. They dragged him out, while his wife started crying out for help. “Stop crying,” Dhruba consoled his wife. “Nothing will happen to me.” His words, however, failed to reassure his wife. She started crying hysterically holding her two little daughters close to her.
The group whisked Dhruba away. It was past midnight and everyone in the neighborhood was deep asleep. Kaushala spent the whole night awake with her daughters. As the dawn broke, she stepped out in search of her husband. She wandered frantically, asking everyone if they spotted him.
Six years on, Kaushala hasn´t received a word from Dhruba. Kaushala enquired a couple of Maoist leaders, but they denied their involvement in the abduction. The local administration also pledged ignorance. She has lost hopes of finding her husband alive. “He would have returned home had he still been alive.”
Though she now believes that her husband must have died, she has not performed the final rites. “I will perform his final rites only after his death is confirmed,” she said.
Kaushala has been eking out a living by running a small teashop at Surkhet Road in Kohalpur of Banke. Earlier, her teashop was in Chappargaudi. “I moved away as the trauma of losing my husband kept on haunting me,” she says.
There are hundreds of families who have lost their loved ones during the decade-long Maoist insurgency. Some of them were kidnapped by the Maoists, while others were detained by the security forces. But neither the government nor the Maoists have made public their whereabouts.
The government and the Maoists had agreed to make public the names of all those who went missing during the insurgency within 60 days, while signing the Comprehensive Peace Process (CPA) in November, 2006. Three years on, their commitments still remain to be implemented into action.
According to the latest report of the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC), there are 1,348 disappeared persons. The government had informed 33 families of disappeared persons about their whereabouts after ICRC´s previous report. However, the condition of other disappeared remains unknown.
On the occasion of International Day of the Disappeared (August 30), ICRC has sent postcards to the families of disappeared persons. The postcards console them that they are not alone and their plight has not been ignored. “They are frustrated," explains Rafiullah Qureshi, communication delegate at ICRC. “We want to tell them that we are still fighting on their behalf. We think these cards will rekindle their hopes.”
According to Diwakar Devkota, director at the Department of Postal Service, all postcards have already been delivered to the families concerned. “We gave priority to it despite shortage of manpower,” he said.
Meanwhile, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), the UK, has, on behalf of all European embassies in Nepal, urged the government "to meet its commitment" to establish the Commission of Inquiry on Disappearances, with legislation that both fully meets international standards and complies with the Supreme Court´s June 2007 ruling.
It has also called upon the Unified CPN-Maoist “to make known the fate of individuals” who were abducted by the Maoists, and "to cooperate" with the investigations into the cases.
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