Apex court orders govt to compensate families of disappeared people

The Supreme Court on Friday ordered the government to pay compensation to the families of 83 persons disappeared by the state.

Deciding a number of similar writ petitions, a division bench of the SC ordered the government to pay Rs 1.5 lakh each to the families of three disappeared persons, Bipin Bhandari, Dil Bahadur Rai and Rajendra Dhakal, and Rs 1 lakh each to the families of 79 other missing persons.

The bench comprising justices Khil Raj Regmi and Kalyan Shrestha also asked the authorities to pay Rs 2 lakh as compensation to the family of Chakra Bahadur Katawal, a high-school teacher from Okhaldhunga, who was killed in government detention.

The court also ordered the government to form a high-level commission to probe the involuntary disappearances.

Almost all involuntary disappearances by the state had occurred during the decade-long Maoist insurgency. The families of disappeared persons had moved the apex court on different dates since 2055 BS.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), whereabouts of more than 800 missing during the insurgency remain still unknown. nepalnews.com mk June 01 07

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