Such were the increasingly bizarre explanations for the massacre on Friday night of Nepal's royal family in which King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya and six others died. In scenes reminiscent of Britain's mourning for Princess Diana in 1997, crowds of shocked and sobbing Nepalis queued up outside the royal palace on Sunday to pay respects to their popular monarchs. Others strewed flowers alongside huge pictures of the king and queen put up at crossroads, while barbers did brisk business as Nepali men had their heads shaved in the Hindu tradition of mourning. A ballistics expert in New Delhi said, however, that such a scenario was impossible. It cannot go off on its own.
Someone has to pull the trigger first.
The radio announcement replaced an earlier explanation given by officials that Crown Prince Dipendra had shot his parents and then himself in what media reports described as a row over his choice of bride. His uncle, Prince Gyandendra, named regent since the new king was in a coma, also issued a statement suggesting the massacre was the result of an automatic weapon going off by accident. He was out of town at the time of the killings. Some 200 men and women, many of the men with shaved heads, marched through the streets demanding execution for the king's killers and scoffed at the official explanations of the deaths. There is definitely a large conspiracy here.