Nagarkot Massacre Victims

Ah..feeling so tired. Today was a tough day. Yesterday was similar. As I was recovering from the pilo, events dragged me in full swing. To live in Nepal these days means you will experience all the fascinating developments personally. From very near. Live in real life. The Nagarkot Massacre case as a shocking surprise as I was participating in a low-profile ceremony organized to release Nepathya’s latest album Ghatana. In the album, the 25-minute-long title song, details an incident in Mainapokhari a year ago in which a bus carrying civilians was caught into a live firing between Maoists and the army. A bigger and horrific Ghatana (incident) happened in Nagarkot hours ahead of the album release.

While returning from the program, I got the details of the incident from Prateek Pradhan, the editor of the Kathmandu Post. He dropped me in the office of Kantipur and within 20 minutes I got words from Hari Bahadur Thapa, the Chief Reporter at Kantipur. “Army is taking journalists to Chhauni (Birendra Sainik) Hospital. Rush to Officers’ Club immediately.” There you go. As I was about to get out of the Kantipur Complex, I found DK Jaishy, Chief Reporter at the Post, going to Sundhara. He hired a cab and ah…both time and money saved. Many journalists were already present and I couldn’t find seat in the army bus. No problem. I was determined to be at the hospital and see the survivors. That’s what happened.

I was deeply wounded by seeing those innocents who were victims of a senseless firing. But more than that I was hurt by the behavior of journalists in front of those wounded souls. Journalists were like, what to say, careless folks who were only interested in their stories. They didn’t care about the Nagarkot folks health. They were asking questions, creating hustling and bustling and big noise. More than 35 reporters and photographers were in the room were four victims were kept. Their names were written on the files kept on the end of the bed but no one cared to see and read that. Everyone was asking: What is your name? What happened? Where were you exactly? I could see wounded folks were tired of repeating the answers because questions were repeating from one scribe to another. Trying to get information from them was like was like raping the victims.

Yes, if journalists don’t ask, public will not know. So, they have to ask. But I was afraid to ask a single question to a single Nagarkoti. I couldn’t do that.