Nepal has formally drawn the attention of India over the killing of its citizen by the Sashastra Seema Bal in Kanchanpur district.

Nepal’s Ambassador to India Deep Kumar Upadhyay took up the matter with officials at the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) of India and protested the firing by the SSB on a Nepali man on the Nepal-India border on Thursday.

The envoy met Joint-secretary Sudhakar Dalela, chief of the Nepal desk at the MEA, to express Nepal’s concerns. “I urged [India for] prompt investigation into the issue and necessary action,” Upadhyay told the Post over phone from the Indian capital.

Upadhyay also objected to the statement issued by the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu that denied firing by the SSB on Thursday evening. “India should not have made such a statement considering the sensitivity of the matter and the friendly relations between the two countries,” Upadhyay reportedly told the Indian officials. Indian officials informed him that they have launched a probe, for which they expected support from Nepal.

The MEA said its border security force has initiated an enquiry into the death of “a Nepal man, allegedly in firing by the SSB, at the Nepal-India border in Kanchanpur district on Thursday”. Gobinda Gautam, 32, of Ananda Bazaar of Punarbas Municipality-8 in Kanchanpur district died when India’s SSB opened fire on locals at the border on Thursday.

In a statement on Friday, the MEA said the government of Nepal was requested through the diplomatic channel to share post-mortem and forensic reports of the incident.