Isaac, So what is nepali culture again? That it is patriarchal, you say. What does that exactly mean? That every family is headed by a man? or that most families are headed by men?
you make a very sweeping generalization and I get a feeling you are basically saying that males hold all the power and the implication is pointedly that all nepali families and the culture itself is patriarchal. Go to an average muslim country and you will see women clad from head to toe, where they are not even allowed to show anything or voice anything. Go to nepal, you will not see this. as a matter of fact, ppl will be shocked if that were to occur. I feel there's a warp between your reality and the true reality. When does having a certain race, make you that much more understanding. Someone could be white and understand your asian heritage better than you! Or understand even our nepali culture better but unless you have seen and experienced it themselves, reading about it on paper and Wikipedia (which I am sure you have already done or some form of it) doesn't count to much. It has to be shown that you understand it better. You cannot claim this yourself and expect anyone to just go along with that idea. There were cases of "sati" before but that's been illegal for a hundred and more years.

Also, going about this case as a sort of Women's liberation movement is wrong. What is the crime? What is the punishment? Did the crime really occur? Lay down the verdict if it occurred. The people involved could be two guys, two girls, guy and girl, girl and guy, asian, american, south asian, african, european and any other combination. Trying to look back at history and using your pseudo-intellect to understand an issue (without leaving any doubt too) is not anyone's job in this case. we are not writing a sociology paper here. the job is to get a better picture of the Crime itself and the evidence and decide.
We have a saying in nepali "goo lai dherai chalaayo bhane, chhitta oodchha" >>>"if you poke s*** around, it gets all over you" and i am getting that feeling talking about this case. On hindsight, maybe we should have just left it alone and just accepted the judge's decision. For who is this guy? I don't know him nor want to have anything to do with him now (even if he's innocent in this case). There is no smoke without some fire definitely.

I suppose most of us are babbling here just to see if justice has been served fairly. Oh well, time to get a nice shower and rub s*** off. Peace.