When crime pays

The country’s two biggest and best established political parties are openly promoting criminals and gangsters.

The Nepali political class is by and large considered immune to public criticism. Even as the amount of flak they face mounts by the day, they appear determined to continue on their own merry way. Otherwise, how can they justify appointing certified criminals and gangsters as ministers? Or picking someone charged with sexual exploitation to a top constitutional post? And how does the public trust a government packed with such tainted figures? In the latest instance of shamelessness, Nepali Congress has picked Badshah Kurmi, someone who is being investigated in a grave crime of the disappearance of a woman, as a minister in Lumbini province. This, just a month after protestors asking for justice signed a five-point deal with the erstwhile Pushpa Kamal Dahal-led government, whereby the government promised to investigate Nirmala Kurmi’s mysterious 2010 disappearance and Badshah’s supposed hand in it. An earlier government committee formed to look into the matter had recommended that eight people, including Badshah, be apprehended and investigated in the case. The seven others were arrested, but not Badshah.