Police are still clueless about the whereabouts of Rajiv Gurung aka Deepak Manange, a gangster turned Provincial Assembly member, a week after the Supreme Court ordered the authorities to jail him on an attempted murder conviction. 

The delay in his arrest has raised a serious question on the effectiveness of police. 

Manange, who was elected to a provincial assembly seat from Manang Province “Kha” constituency as an independent candidate, is on the run in the wake of the SC’s sentence.  

On January 16, the apex court had overturned the ruling of the Kathmandu District Court and upheld the Patan Appellate Court’s decision to convict Manange with attempted murder of rival gang leader Milan Gurung aka Chakre in the Capital 13 years ago. 

Manange was a no-show at the oath ceremony of Provincial Assembly members of Province 4 that took place at the Nadipur-based Municipal Development Training Centre Hall in Pokhara, Kaski, on Sunday.

Kaski district police chief SP Ashok Singh said a team was kept on a standby at the venue where the oath ceremony was conducted, but Manange did not show up.  

“We were prepared to arrest him, but he did not come to the function. Our search is still on,” said SP Singh.

Nepal Police Headquarters has already instructed its units across the country to arrest Manange on sight, said police spokesperson DIG Manoj Neupane. 

“He is an absconding criminal and the Nepal Police is doing its best to capture him.”  

While the police administration claims to be doing its best and continuing its pursuit to apprehend Manange, it has little to show for it.

There are many who believe that Manange has managed to stay off the police radar so far due to political patronage, because this is not the first time a convict with political reach has avoided capture. 

Former Maoist lawmaker Bal Krishna Dhungel is a case in point. He was arrested eight years after he was convicted in a murder case. In the interim period between his conviction and arrest, Dhungel had walked freely in public. Police, meanwhile, had felt no incumbent responsibility to arrest him.     

Police has also apparently failed to arrest former DIG Nawaraj Silwal charged of forging his performance evaluation document in a bid to become the chief of Nepal Police.

Incidentally, Silwal too was elected to a federal parliament seat as a CPN-UML candidate before fleeing the law. 

Nawaraj Dhakal, former AIG of Nepal Police, said the public trust in police institution was deteriorating due to the latter’s failure to arrest criminals with political 

associations.  

“This is a result of politicisation of our state mechanisms and inept leadership in police administration,” he said.