147 days into their second hunger strike, the parents of Krishna Prasad Adhikari were visited by the Nepali prime minister in a Kathmandu hospital on 22 March. Sushil Koirala pleaded with Nanda Prasad Adhikari to end his protest (his wife Ganga Maya Adhikari, also on a protein drip, was unconscious).
Krishna Adhikari was abducted and brutally murdered in June 2004 while visiting his grandparents in the Chitwan district of Nepal, after sitting his school-leaving exams. Though his relatives immediately identified Maoist militants who they believed to have carried out the murder, no action was taken until last September, nine years later. One of the four accused was arrested, after a hunger strike by Krishna Adhikari’s parents had reached its 47th day. When the suspect was freed, in violation of official commitments to the couple, they resumed their hunger strike.
In an open letter to the UN high commissioner for human rights on 20 March, seven leading Nepali human rights activists wrote: ‘this case has become the litmus test as to whether the run of impunity in Nepal will end’.
No Nepali party has shown enthusiasm for the setting up of a genuine truth and reconciliation commission that would bring justice for the victims of the 10-year Nepali civil war.