He was arrested at his home in the Battisputali neighbourhood of the
capital after several months in hiding and was the editor of the
pro-Maoist Janadisha (banned when a state of emergency was declared in
November last year) and former managing editor of the weekly Janadesh.
He had spent two years in prison when he was released by the Supreme
Court in March last year.

The authorities gave no news of Sen after his arrest. On 25 June, a
Kathmandu journalist told Reporters Without Borders that Sen had died
while being tortured. The news provoked a national and international
outcry. But the government denied he had ever been arrested and tried to
hide his death. On 4 July, the interior minister said police were
searching diligently for the ³Maoist leader² Sen and that there was a
reward of more than US$ 30,000 for anyone who found him. A regime lie
was born.

A Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières) fact-finding
mission went to Nepal from 3 to 8 September and heard that Sen died on 28
May, eight days after his arrest, in the interrogation room at
Kathmandu¹s Mahendra Police Club. His body was reportedly sent to the
Birendra police hospital in Maharajgunj (near the Royal Palace), where
his death was confirmed.

Versions of what happened next diverge. Some say his body was sent to
the morgue at Kathmandu hospital, autopsied and then handed over to city
officials for cremation on the banks of the Bagmati river. Others think
the police did not ask for an autopsy and simply got rid of the body.

Dr Harihar Wasti, who performed an autopsy on 30 May on an unidentified
body that could have been Sen¹s, told Reporters Without Borders that he
could not say for sure that it was Sen. "I didn¹t recognise him and
there was no sign of any blows to the body. Just two bullets fired at
point-blank range which seemed to be the only cause of death." But the
body did meet the description of Sen ­ 1 metre 70 tall, 70 kgs, Mongol
features and a thin moustache.

Police normally take bodies to the Kathmandu hospital morgue and are
responsible for photographing and establishing a body¹s identity, since
the forensic department does not have enough money to take photos of all
corpses. In this case, the police brought the body in, asked for an
autopsy and then took it away for cremation without letting doctors know
who it was. Police said he had been killed by a police patrol on the
night on 29-30 May at Gokrana, northeast of Kathmandu.

Nepalese human rights activists told us that the body was indeed Sen's
but that the autopsy was curtailed to conceal the fact that death was due
to blows and to make it look like it was due to a "routine" clash between
security forces and a Maoist suspect. The mission tried to verify if the
body autopsied by Dr Wasti could have been Sen's. The autopsy report
(two pages filed as report no. 59/0150) mentions no sign of blows, simply
the two bullet wounds. The shots, probably from a rifle, would therefore
be understood as the cause of death, hiding the fact that they might have
been fired after the person's death to conceal that torture was the real
cause.

Mission member Dr Jean Rivolet says the autopsy included a number of gaps
and errors. No blood sample was taken, so it could not be said for sure
whether the person was killed by bullets or died before the shots were
fired. The forensic expert also failed to make tests to detect any deep
bruises.

Reporters Without Borders does not doubt the good faith of the
pathologist but, with the country under a state of emergency, he may have
received strong pressure from the police.


Contradictions in the official version

Two weeks after news of Sen's death came out, Kathmandu police chief Amar
Singh Shah summoned Kishor Shrestha, managing editor of the opposition
weekly Jana Ashta, to discuss Sen's disappearance. Shrestha told the
Reporters Without Borders mission that the police chief said: "Sen died
in detention. There are witnesses. I ask you to stop reporting on this
business. It's demoralising for my officers. (Š) We didn't know he was
ill. He was in a weak state."

After this conversation, which was supposed to be secret, Shrestha
published two more articles about Sen's death. On 4 August, police
forced their way into the offices of Jana Ashta and arrested Shrestha.
He was taken a police station and interrogated about Sen for nearly two
hours by eight officers, including a Supt. Khanal and an Inspector
Mainali.

He was then put in a cell, where he met a youth, suspected of being a
Maoist sympathiser, who told him he had been arrested at the same time as
Sen. "I was there when they killed Sen," he said. "The police chief was
there too. We were blindfolded but we heard what was happening in the
room."

National and international protests at Sen's reported death in detention
forced the government to defend itself. On 10 July a commission of
enquiry was set up, chaired by a top interior ministry official and
including no independent figures. The Federation of Nepalese Journalists
and leading human rights groups immediately challenged its credibility.

In early September, the commission handed to the King a report that only
partly explained Sen's "disappearance." It said it had found no trace of
his arrest and simply suggested that the unidentified body autopsied on
30 May and supposedly of someone killed in a shootout may have been his.

However, several things point to Sen having been arrested by security
forces.

… The police announced his arrest and the Kathmandu Post, the Kantipur
Daily and the website nepalnews.com reported this.
… Army officers told Sen's wife, Takama K.C., that her husband had been
arrested and then handed over to police for interrogation. She herself
was arrested on 27 June and freed the next day. The army also returned
to her some land title deeds that had been seized when Sen had been
arrested.
… On 28 June, prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba told the press that "in
time you will know the truth," hinting that he knew what had really
happened.


Recommendations

To clarify this case, Reporters Without Borders calls on primer minister
Lokendra Bahadur Chand, to:

- Send to the Federation of Nepalese Journalists and Reporters Without
Borders the police photographs of the body autopsied on 30 May and
details of the circumstances of this person's death.
- Disclose the names of those who were held between 20 and 30 May at the
Mahendra Police Club.
- Present in court the two other pro-Maoist journalists (Atindra Neupane
and Sangita Khadka) arrested at the same time as Sen, so that they can
testify publicly about the circumstances of their arrest and detention.
- Give the independent commission set up with the Federation of Nepalese
Journalists the personnel and material resources to renew the
investigation into Sen's disappearance. Reporters Without Borders and
the Damocles Network are ready to help the commission by providing it
with independent international experts

Reporters Without Borders is sending this report to the UN Special
Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, to the
Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment, as well as to the president of the Working Group
on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances of the UN Commission on Human
Rights.


Vincent Brossel
Asia - Pacific Desk
Reporters Sans Frontières
5 rue Geoffroy Marie
75009 Paris
33 1 44 83 84 70
33 1 45 23 11 51 (fax)