A Case of Forced Disappearance

About 15 plain-clothes security officers came with guns to the house of Purna Bahadur Sunuwar in Kharelthok village in Nepal's Kavre district on the morning of February 17. They demanded to speak to Sunuwar's wife, Devi. But when the officers found out that Devi was in her mother's place in Pokharichauri, they arrested the 15-year-old daughter Maina.

"What mistake did my daughter make that you are arresting her?" Sunuwar asked. But the officers just said they were taking Maina for investigation, without explaining. Maina refused to go with them. They then took her away in force. Sunuwar immediately called his wife and asked his relatives for help.

Maina was a student of grade nine at Bhagawati Secondary School.

The next day, Sunuwar and his wife, together with the principal of the Bhagawati school, the chairman of Kharelthok village committee and some of his relatives-about 25 people-tried to find out where Maina was and why the security officers arrested her. Believing that Maina was taken to the Lamidada barrack, also known as the Shanti gate, in the same district, Sunuwar and others went to the barrack and asked for Maina's condition. However, the army officers at Lamidada denied that they had arrested Maina.

People in the village consider that Maina's arrest is related to her witness of the arrest of two girls by the army earlier. One of the girls was raped and both were later killed in Pokharichauri. Despite the family's efforts to locate Maina, her whereabouts remain unknown.

The International Committee of the Red Cross in Kathmandu once received a letter from the army that mentioned about Maina's death. The letter claimed that security personnel was forced to shoot her as she tried to flee and refused to listen to their warning when they took her to the army camp.

Sunuwar and his wife then asked the district security offices for Maina's dead body and when and where she was exactly killed. Yet they were informed by the officers that their daughter was not killed. The army was taking her with them when army personnel went out to the village for guarding and patrolling, the officers said.

Sunuwar was perplexed by the contradictory news. "Where is 'My Daughter Killed Thrice?' our daughter?" he asks, recounting the incident. "It feels like a sharp pain in our heart...She is our eldest child. God also doesn't help us to find our innocent daughter. Why have they arrested her?"

On April 1, the media reported that a 25-year-old woman named Maina Tamang was killed. "We suspected that it could be our daughter. Again we went to ask for information from the security offices in the district. Army officers told us that it was our daughter who was killed. But again we could not find her body or any information about the place where she was killed," Sunuwar says.

"We have requested the police and the army to disclose the real information whether Maina is alive or killed. But they do not listen at all. We have gone to the police office and the army barracks, even in Kathmandu, the capital city. We cried and begged them to give us the information. If she is alive then allow us to meet her; if she is dead then give us back her dead body at least. But they do not hear our voices and do not care about our pain for losing our dearest daughter," he says.

Yet, more dreadful news awaited Sunuwar when he tried to find out his daughter's whereabouts from the Bhadrakali army barrack in Kathmandu, the main office of the army security, on October 6. There, he was informed that she died inside the army camp on July 19. "It was a big shock for us. They were saying that our daughter, one person, was killed three times in different dates and places. We shouted at them and asked: 'Where is our daughter’s dress then? Where are her other belongings? And when is the exact date that my daughter was killed?' The army officer from the Bhadrakali barrack told us to go to the police office in Bhagawatisthan if we wanted to find her clothes." The following day, Sunuwar accompanied by some friends went to the Bhagawatisthan police unit. But the police there said they had no idea of the case and did not have any Maina's clothes.

Since then, Sunuwar cannot find any more information about her daughter. Sunuwar and his wife are seeking help from human rights organisations and different newspapers in the capital in the hope that they can help find out the truth. "If our daughter is not killed, please let us see her," Sunuwar pleads.

- Written by Ram Krishna Adhikari and Anita Pariyar
A Case of Forced Disappearance