After the verdict

The high court’s decision on former minister Alam appears to rely heavily on technicality of evidence.

In 2008, as Nepal was preparing for its first-ever Constituent Assembly elections, a bomb exploded on the eve of the polls in what was then the Rajpur Phardawa Village Development Committee of Rautahat district, rocking the entire country. Reportedly, the blast in a shed left many injured . Soon after, in order to kill eyewitnesses to the blast, some survivors were allegedly thrown into the furnace of a nearby brick kiln and burned alive . The supposed architect of the murders was a leader of the Nepali Congress and also a former minister, Mohammad Aftab Alam . In a bid to win the elections and instill fear in order to take hold of booths, he had allegedly gotten some people to make bombs. Even as the family of the victims filed a case against him following the incident, the Office of the Attorney General decided against their plea.