CCPR/C/112/D/2031/2011
2.8
On 14 January 2002, a multiparty meeting was held in public in Besishahar in the
presence of the Chief District Officer, the Deputy Superintendent and other members of the
police, in the course of which political leaders requested Mr. Bhandari’s immediate release.
The police acknowledged the arrest and said that he would be released. A week after this
meeting, the author and his mother received contradictory information from low-ranking
army personnel as to his whereabouts, which mentioned different barracks and the military
hospital. The author inquired at the hospital, but he was told that his father had never been
there.
2.9
On 31 January 2002, the author reported his father’s disappearance to the National
Human Rights Commission. On 1 February 2002, the Commission wrote to the Chief
District Officer and the Deputy Superintendent of Police of Lamjung and to the Army to
inquire about Mr. Bhandari’s whereabouts. On 15 February 2002, the Chief District Officer
responded to the Commission, stating that Mr. Bhandari had told the authorities that he
could lead them to artillery which was hidden in the Simpani jungle. However, during the
search there, he tried to escape and was killed in crossfire.
2.10 On 4 March 2002, the author submitted a writ of habeas corpus to the Supreme
Court. As a result, he received threats from army officers, urging him to stop looking for his
father.
2.11 On 6 March 2002, an army officer replied to the Commission that Mr. Bhandari had
been detained on the accusation of being an active member of a Maoist organization
involved in carrying out violent actions. He further reported on the circumstances of Mr.
Bhandari’s death in the forest area of Simpani Village, Lamjung District, and indicated that
“the security force, which was headed for military action, was compelled to leave the dead
body at the scene due to the security point of view, geographical remoteness and
transportation problems”.
2.12 On 11 March 2002, the author was arrested in Kathmandu, in front of the Supreme
Court by army personnel in civilian clothes and placed in detention in the army barracks.
He was questioned, beaten and threatened with death if he did not withdraw his writ of
habeas corpus. On 5 April 2002, the Supreme Court found that the author’s father was no
longer alive and that, therefore, the habeas corpus order could not be made as requested.
Accordingly, it dismissed the author’s habeas corpus writ. In its ruling, the Supreme Court
pointed out that according to the Chief District Officer, the Deputy Superintendent of
Police and the Army, Mr. Bhandari was killed in crossfire on 1 January 2002, while trying
to escape the security perimeter during an operation to locate ammunition hidden by
Maoists in the jungle.
2.13 The author claims that he had to flee to India for reasons of personal security for a
short period and that he returned to Lamjung in 2006. At that time he was able to gather
testimonies from former detainees, who saw or heard his father while in detention. The first
one, Mr. R.P.S., also detained in the District Police Office on 31 December 2001, stated
that on that night he had seen and could hear the author’s father being beaten for one and a
half hours; that his father was then moaning; that after a while he heard a police officer
saying “I think he is gone” and the lights in the next room went dark. After that, he knew
nothing more. That testimony was corroborated by another detainee, Mr. D.S.G., who heard
Mr. Bhandari screaming and assumed that he was beaten to death.
2.14 On 27 April 2007, the author wrote to the Chief District Officer and the Deputy
Superintendent of Police requesting information about his father’s enforced disappearance.
As he did not receive any answer from them, on 14 June 2007, he tried to file a “first
information report”, but the police orally refused to register it, without issuing a formal
written refusal. The police told the author that they could not arrest a colleague; that they
had no record of the events in question; and that this was a political issue in which they
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