Sudeep Neupane was at a crossroads in his life. At 27 years old, he was exploring various career options but had not yet decided. After completing his bachelor's degree in public health, he was considering pursuing a nephrology course to open a dialysis centre. Meanwhile, his mother and sister were looking for a match for him. On Thursday, all those dreams turned to ashes at Triveni Ghat in Nepal, a confluence of three holy rivers: Trishuli, Gandaki, and Narayani. Neupane was the only non-Indian among the 26 people killed in the Pahalgam terror attack Tuesday. His body, riddled with bullets, was kept at his house in Butwal city in Nepal's Lumbini province for a couple of hours to allow relatives and friends to pay their last respects before it was taken to the ghat, about 70 km away, for the cremation. Sudeep came from a well-off family and attended Horizon Boarding School, which is regarded as one of the best in the area. A decade ago, he moved to Kathmandu to pursue a diploma in health sciences. Later, he continued his studies in public health in the Dharan area of eastern Nepal. Sudeep was in Kashmir with his mother Reema, his sister Sushma, and her husband Yubaraj Kafle. Perhaps he wanted to take a break or go on holiday with his family to the place often described in textbooks as "heaven on earth". Sushma and her husband studied agriculture and were running a veterinary shop in Pokhara, a tourist city in western Nepal, and had arrived in Butwal on the insistence of Sudeep that they must go to Kashmir together. He had already booked the air ticket from Delhi to Jammu. They boarded the Nepal Bharat Maitri Bus, a luxury bus from Butwal to Delhi, with Kashmir as the destination, on April 19. Sudeep's friend Manoj Giri, who was also with them, cut short his trip in Delhi while Sudeep and his family members flew to Jammu for their onward journey, said Amrit Giri, Manoj's brother. "The terrorists asked my son which religion he belonged to, and they shot him dead when he said he was a Hindu," Sudeep's father Dhruba Neupane, who has been living separately from the rest of the family for the last few years, told the media. Dhruba had been in Kathmandu, approximately 250 km from Butwal, for the past three weeks to join a strike by fellow school teachers demanding better working conditions. An official from Jammu told The Indian Express that Sudeep was one of the last victims to be identified, which delayed the handover of his body to the family or the arrangements to send it back to his hometown. In fact, while Sudeep's mother, sister, and brother-in-law were evacuated from the site of the attack and rushed to Jammu, they were left helpless regarding his condition. All that was found on Sudeep's body was a paper that identified him as Sudeep Neupane, son of Kushal Neupane, with an incorrectly spelt address: Batawali, Ropandi, instead of Butwal, Rupandehi. In Butwal, news of his death had spread like wildfire, but there were some logistical challenges to transporting his body. "We approached security authorities in Nepal, including our personal acquaintances, and finally, we contacted his uncle Dadhi Ram Neupane. He is the chairman of the municipal ward, and he made it easy for us to make the arrangements to dispatch the body home, along with his family members," said a family friend. Sudeep's body was flown in on Wednesday afternoon from Jammu Airport to Lucknow, and then transported by road to Butwal, approximately 300 km away, taking almost nine hours. His uncle Dadhi Ram Neupane (Dhruba Neupane's younger brother) received the body in Kathmandu and accompanied it to the village for the last rites. According to Hindu tradition, the family will observe a 13-day mourning period, family sources said.
