Thousands of people in Nepal are still waiting for justice 20 years after tens of thousands were tortured, raped, killed and forcibly disappeared during a decade-long bloody conflict between the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and government forces.
Long-delayed amendments to legislation aimed at addressing the war crimes committed during the 1996-2006 civil war are expected to finally offer justice to victims like Laxmi Khadka.
Khadka last saw her husband, Dil Bahadur, on March 13, 2004, when they were eating dinner with their three children at home in their village in Bardiya district in western Nepal.
The meal was disrupted by a group of Maoist soldiers who entered their family home and dragged Bahadur outside, claiming they needed to “discuss some things.”
He never returned.
Two weeks later, a local newspaper reported that the Maoist group had “eliminated” Bahadur as a suspected enemy — although no evidence supported this claim, so Khadka refused to believe that he had been killed.
“He was an ordinary man who had returned home for a few days after months of working in India,” she told DW, recalling how she even went looking for her missing husband in the forests near their home.
