By Our Reporter

Amid the dramatic political developments, the Supreme Court overturned the then government’s decision to keep a murder-after-abduction case against CPN (Maoist Centre) vice-chair Agni Sapkota and party’s lawmaker Surya Man Dong, allowing police to proceed with investigation.

Issuing a verdict in the decade-old case, the top court has directed the police to carry out the investigation against six people including Sapkota and Dong.

A cabinet led by Baburam Bhattarai in 2012 decided that the insurgency-era case of murder-after-abduction of Arjun Lama falls under the transitional justice process.

Challenging the decision, Lama's wife Purnimaya, the same year moved to the Supreme Court. After postponing the hearing around 60 times, the Constitutional Bench of the court led by Chief Justice Prakash Man Singh Raut finally passed the verdict in the victims' favour.

Lama, 45, was attending a meeting at a local school in Dapcha in the Kavrepalanchok district on April 29, 2005, when a group of CPN-Maoist combatants spirited him away, saying they wanted to talk to him about something. The rebels never let him go.

A subsequent probe by the National Human Rights Commission concluded that the Maoists had killed Lama following his abduction. His family members accused Maoist leaders Sapkota and Dong, among others, of abducting and murdering Lama.

Sapkota and Dong, however, reject the accusation. The frequent attempts of Purnimaya, Arjun’s wife, to register a first information report were turned down by the Kavrepalanchok district police, prompting her to knock on the Supreme Court’s door on March 3, 2008 for its intervention in the case.

The police registered the case after the top court’s directive to immediately accept the complaint and update the top court on the proceedings every 15 days. The Kavrepalanchok district police wrote to Sindhupalchok police to locate and arrest Sapkota. But Sindhupalchok police reported that Sapkota was nowhere to be found.

Sapkota was elected to Parliament from Sindhupalchok thrice after the complaint was lodged and went on to become a Cabinet member and then the Speaker. But now he is likely to face music.