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Kathmandu Saturday June 16, 2001 Ashadh 02, 2058.
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Report has flaws: Experts
Post Report
KATHMANDU, June 15 – Constitutional lawyers and
experts in criminal investigations say the report presented by the powerful probe
committee Thursday is incomplete and lacks professionalism.
They say the report fails to corroborate eyewitnesses account
with facts and also fails to reach any conclusion about the June 1 Royal Palace massacre.
" It is not the conclusion but confusion that the report offers," says a senior
constitutional lawyer on condition of anonymity.
The members of the probe committee have said that they have
done their best to bring out facts within the limitations of the Terms of Reference (ToR)
given by the King. However, the senior lawyer argues that ToR asked the committee to
"find out facts and truth about the incident". "Finding out facts doesn’t
mean just recording the eyewitness accounts," he argues.
After the June 1 incident, the worst ever regicide in modern
Nepali history, the much asked questions by the Nepali (and the foreigners) was: Who
pulled the trigger and why?
What makes the report incomplete, according to them is that
it tries to answer the question "Who ?" by drawing inference, based on
eyewitness accounts, that the then Crown Prince Dipendra shot dead the King, royalties and
relatives. "But it doesn’t bother to answer the question "Why," say
experts.
However, is it not that the report doesn’t indicate to
any "motive" or possible reason behind the killing. There are two weak
inferences on this front as well.
The first inference points towards the possible marriage
dispute between the then Crown Prince Dipendra and his parents. The probe committee’s
interview with Prince Paras, Pashupati Sumsher JB Rana and his wife roughly points towards
that dispute. However, two facts confront the possibility that the dispute exactly helped
trigger the killing: Dipendra saying, "I am going to sleep, I will talk to you
tomorrow, good night " to Debyani Rana at 8:39 p.m. and Prince Paras’s account
that Dipendra told him that he would talk to late King Birendra (his father) about the
marriage on June 3.
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