Police arrested Padma Bahadur Adhikari, 59, of Letang Municipality-2, Phadani, School Chowk on December 5, for the charge of raping and killing a 13-year-old girl on October 7. SP Kabita Kutwal of the District Police Office, during a press conference on December 7 stated that the accused had been hiding in Meghalaya, India, since November 5 and with the assistance of his family, the police summoned him back to Nepal and arrested him from his home.
A 13-year-old girl from Phadani, School Chowk, Letang Municipality-2, went missing from her home on 8 October , and 18 days later, on 24 October, her body was found brutally killed in the Belbari Chisang Community Forest. Lochan Shahi, who went to cut grass there, reported the girl’s body to the police after discovering it. The Letang Area Police Office and Budhabare Police Post covered the crime scene and conducted an investigation, but the police arrested the suspect only two months after the incident.
The accused, who lived in a nearby house, lured the girl with a promised to let her use a mobile phone if she helped him with grass-cutting on 7 October. According to the police, the accused then took the girl nearly four kilometers away to the Belbari Chisang forest, where he allegedly raped her and killed her by slitting her throat with a sickle, as he later confessed to the police. During the preliminary investigation, it was revealed that the accused tried to mislead the police when they faced difficulty understanding how the girl had reached the forest nearly four kilometers away from her home on the evening of 7 October around 5 PM. When the police cordoned off the crime scene on 24 October, the accused was present among the crowd, lamenting, ‘she was like my granddaughter, how could this happen?’ when the police were preparing profiles of the deceased girl’s household, surrounding area, and neighbors, the accused had been attempting to assist or manipulate the investigation. On 4 November, the accused’s son returned home, and the accused, Padma Bahadur Adhikari, reportedly left for India early on 5 November. Following this, the police focused their investigation on him.
In his initial statement to the police, the accused claimed that after going to Meghalaya, India, he worked in a cowshed and, while milking the cows, he hallucinated seeing blood and girl’s face on the bucket and on her face.
After collecting over 300 written statements and investigation, the police concluded that Padma Bahadur was solely involved in the incident and, on 6 December, filed a case at the District Court under charges of killing and rape.
The body of the girl was sent to B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences (BPKIHS), Dharan, for post-mortem. Since the victim’s family had demanded not to take the body until the accused was arrested, the body has remained in the BPKIHS mortuary. On 8 December, the police prepared to hand over the body to the victim’s family after completing the legal procedures.