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Journalism of Courage
Cheered and hated equally for his acerbic tongue and intemperate behaviour, Nepal’s Prime Minister K P Oli has come under attack from all sides, except his own party, for the treatment given to a university vice-chancellor Saturday night.
Nepal Sanskrit University Vice-Chancellor Kul Prasad Koirala, who was heading to Vancouver, Canada, where he was to lead a seven-member Nepali delegation in the world Sanskrit conference beginning Monday, was approached by two police personnel at the Tribhuvan International Airport check-in counter in Kathmandu, asking him to meet their ‘boss’ upstairs.
The ‘boss’, a Deputy Inspector General rank official, took Koirala straight to the Prime Minister’s official residence in Baluatar, with the message that Oli, who is the university’s Chancellor, wanted to see him immediately.
After waiting there for over an hour, he was told that Oli was busy and would see him the next day.
“I was treated like a criminal and the whole purpose of taking me to the PM’s residence and detaining me there seemed to be to make me miss my flight,” Koirala told The Indian Express.
The other members of the delegation took the flight.
On Sunday, the issue was raised in the Rashtriya Sabha — the upper house of Nepal’s Parliament. Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa Badal told the Rashtriya Sabha that Koirala was going to Canada without the government’s authorisation.
A former minister who refused to go on the record, said, “The fact that he was taken to the PM’s residence in a police official’s vehicle and detained there for an hour shows PM’s complicity in the whole episode.”
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