The Supreme Court has refused to release Resham Chaudhary, who stands accused of the August 2015 Tikapur riot.
Chaudhary was sworn in as a Member of Parliament on Thursday as he was briefly taken out of the Dillibazaar Prison where he has been lodged.
Chaudhary managed to win the parliamentary elections held in December last year from Kailali-1 on the Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal ticket despite being on the run.
After he turned himself in to police, the Kailali District Court on February 26, 2018 decided to put Chaudhary in detention for further investigation. The Dipayal High Court subsequently upheld the district court’s order on April 5, 2018.
He was later moved to Dillibazaar Prison in Kathmandu. In response to a writ field by Chaudhary in June last year at the Supreme Court demanding annulment of the decisions of the lower courts, a division bench of Justices Ishwor Prasad Khatiwada and Purushottam Bhandari on Monday decided to continue with the decisions of the District Court and the High Court to detain Chaudhary for further investigation.
The SC has stated that the lower courts had taken the decision on the basis of evidences and statements of “his accomplices”, including Sundar Lal Kadariya, Prem Bahadur Chaudhary, Raj Kumar Kadariya and Ram Prasad Chaudhary, that they were involved in the Tikapur riot under Resham’s direction and that his call details indicated he was not far away from the spot.
Eight people, including a toddler and SSP Laxman Neupane, died in the riot a month before the Constituent Assembly passed a new constitution in 2015.
Tika R Pradhan is a senior political correspondent for the Post, covering politics, parliament, judiciary and social affairs. Pradhan joined the Post in 2016 after working at The Himalayan Times for more than a decade.
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