A decade after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Accord and nearly a year after promulgation of the new constitution, Makaimaryang here in the district remains deserted. All the 14 families in the village, who were forced to leave during the decade-long insurgency, never returned to the village.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons have been collecting complaints from conflict victims since mid-April. However, these displaced people have no idea about the transitional justice process.

“We have no time to think of anything other than managing two meals a day,” said a displaced villager. They have been living as daily wage earners in Pokhara, Beshisahar and Ishaneshwor. The only school in the village remains shut down.

“We are not in touch with many of the villagers,” said Prabati Tamang, who has been living in a single room with her sister Nilkumari in Besisahar, the district headquarters of Lamjung, for the past 13 years. Twenty years ago, people in the Tamang settlement helped each other in difficulties. The Army killed Ram Chandra Tiwari, suspecting him to be a cadre of the then rebel Maoists. The villagers were threatened by both the state forces and the rebel fighters.

“A soldier put a gun to my forehead after recovering a bag belonging to the Maoists in my house,” said Sukamaya Tamang. According to her, security forces told the villagers that the entire village would be bombed if they sheltered any Maoist cadre.

She saw members of the then Royal Nepal Army caning Indra Tamang’s children for “feeding the Maoists”. Nobody came to their rescue. “Why would I risk my life?” she wondered. As her husband was worked abroad, she moved to Beshisahar along with her three children, feeling insecure to live in the village. Maoist cadres thrashed Nirumaya Tamang, then chief of Ward No 7, accusing her of spying on them. Mum Bahadur Tamang and his brother Kesh Bahadur recently moved to Danai village from Besisahar as they could not pay the room rent. “I had to pay Rs6,000 every month for a room,” said Mum Bahadur, who was unable to send his two sons to school beyond the eighth grade.

The chances of the displaced returning of the village grew slim after the earthquakes last year destroyed the deserted houses.