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school and asked the principal to take care of the two children because, as she was forced to
say, “she was attending a programme”.
2.4
The following day, while Ms. Sharma was being interrogated, her brother Himal was
brought to the room next to the one where she was being held. Ms. Sharma she could hear
that he was being tortured, and she was kicked and beaten with plastic pipes.
2.5
On 24 October 2003, Ms. Sharma was taken to her apartment while the authorities
searched it, and was allowed to take some clothes to her children’s school and give them to
the principal, without mentioning that she was under detention.
2.6
On 25 October 2003, Ms. Sharma’s husband, Mr. Paudel, returned home from his
village and enquired as to the whereabouts of his family. The following day, the school
principal informed Mr. Paudel that his children were being kept at the school and that he
had received orders from the authorities not to hand them to Mr. Paudel without
permission. The children eventually returned home one month later.
2.7
On 27 October 2003, a State officer went to Ms. Sharma’s apartment to search it,
and informed Mr. Paudel that his wife was under arrest and would be released soon,
without disclosing her whereabouts.
2.8
On 29 October 2003, as Ms. Sharma still had not been released, Mr. Paudel
submitted an application to the National Human Rights Commission denouncing his wife’s
disappearance. The following day, he also filed a writ petition to the Supreme Court of
Nepal demanding an order of habeas corpus, claiming that Ms. Sharma had been illegally
detained at an unknown location.
2.9
The Supreme Court issued a cause notice against the eight respondents referred to in
the writ petition. In November 2003, all public authorities concerned denied any involvement
in or awareness of the disappearance of Ms. Sharma. On 25 June 2004, the Supreme Court
quashed the writ petition on the grounds of lack of evidence proving Ms. Sharma’s illegal
detention.
2.10 On 4 February 2004, Mr. Paudel informed Amnesty International about his wife’s
disappearance. The organization officially requested clarifications from the Government, to
which the Government did not replied.
2.11 Ms. Sharma reports that, for the first four or five months of her detention, she was
routinely interrogated under duress at any time of the day or night. She was frequently
beaten with sticks, subjected to falanga (foot whipping), held underwater for prolonged
periods of time and threatened with rape. For most of her detention, she remained
handcuffed and blindfolded, except to eat, had very limited access to water and food, which
was of poor quality, could only go to the toilet once a day and was not allowed to wash
herself. Two other detainees, Ms. B.M. and Mr. J.M.B., reported that Ms. Sharma had been
severely beaten. On 11 March 2004, she was repeatedly subjected to the “submarino”
technique until she signed a fake confession. After that, she was no longer subjected to
torture, but her health deteriorated due to the poor detention conditions. In June 2004, she
became severely ill and was taken to the military hospital of Chhauni on two consecutive
occasions, where she was diagnosed with an ulcer. She remained in the hospital until about
the middle of September 2004.
2.12 On 25 August 2004, Ms. Sharma by chance met a friend of hers while at the
hospital, and secretly handed her a letter for Mr. Paudel indicating that she was being held
in the Bhairabnath Battalion barracks. She asked her friend not to make the information
immediately public, for fear of reprisals.
2.13 Three months after receiving the letter, and since he had not received any further
news from his wife, Mr. Paudel shared the letter with members of All Nepal National
Independent Student Union Revolutionary, which released a press statement on 19
November 2004 about Ms. Sharma’s condition. When the letter was made public, Ms.
Sharma was interrogated harshly and beaten severely with pipes over a week.
2.14 At the beginning of 2005, Ms. Sharma was moved to a small, dark room, where she
was kept in isolation, blindfolded and handcuffed. She managed, however, to write on a
little notebook and made an arrangement with a cook to deliver a few letters to Mr. Paudel.
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