At the talks table

There is no alternative to dialogue for lasting peace.

History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, then as a farce, said Karl Marx, the reigning deity of many of Nepali communists and leftists. In 2002, cadres of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists), which organised the 10-year insurgency, brutally murdered Muktinath Adhikari, a Lamjung-based high school headmaster, for refusing to kowtow to the party's demands. Eighteen years later, on Tuesday, cadres of the Communist Party of Nepal, a splinter of the erstwhile Maoists, killed Rajendra Kumar Shrestha, 54, the principal of Saraswati Basic School in Ramite of Miklajung Rural Municipality in Morang district. The Mechi-Koshi bureau of the outfit had abducted Shrestha from his home before killing him purportedly 'for working as an informant' for the police.