Of these 200, at least 80 were killed in just the last 14 months. The Maoist group has also handed out summary justice, including cruel forms of punishment, through kangaroo courts. Police, for their part, executed hundreds of people in disputed circumstances, including those they could instead have arrested and others who had already surrendered. Courts lack the teeth to prosecute such crimes. At least 400 out of nearly 800 killed by police in these four years may have been deliberately executed.
Helpless relatives run from courtroom to police-station trying to discover their fate.
Reports of political and other prisoners being tortured are common, Amnesty International has found over several field trips. Police officials have been arrested and charged with murder in this case, but other complaints are ignored. But draconian laws lacking human rights safeguards are neither a just nor an effective way of meeting them. It also urges the government to set up new mechanisms to ensure that all allegations will be independently investigated and to speed up its long-delayed moves to set up a human rights commission. Amnesty International Secretary General Pierre San will deliver these appeals in person later this month, in talks with government ministers in Kathmandu.