Nepal village mourns sons' killing in Kashmir

By Indo Asian News Service

Kathmandu, June 15 (IANS) The tiny village of Govindapur in southeastern Nepal, wracked by abysmal poverty, unemployment and caste discrimination, has been mourning the death of eight of its sons in a militant attack in Jammu and Kashmir this week.


On Monday, unidentified gunmen killed nine non-Kashmiri labourers, of whom eight were Nepalis from Morang district in southeastern Nepal.

All the eight - whose names were given as Delsha Rishidev, Dallu, Chhota Dallu, Kalu Rishidev, Laxmi Singh, Rishi Tajpuri, Chinko Rishidev and Dina Mandal - belonged to the Mushahar community, an extremely poor and illiterate community at the bottom of the social hierarchy who derived their name from the custom of eating rats due to food scarcity.

The men, in their early 20s and 30s, were part of a 16-member group from the village that had gone to India in March to earn livelihood. While eight were killed in the attack, three were injured.

Their families work as labourers for village landlords, being paid in kind, a part of the crop they harvest - just enough to keep them alive.

Residents of this shanty village are squatters many of whom do not have citizenship documents and, therefore, are unable to get government jobs or facilities offered by the state to underprivileged communities.

The men were reportedly earning Rs.100 per day in India, considered a princely sum by the community. The dead men's families had raised loans worth Nepali Rs.500 for each of them to send them to India. Now, besides losing their breadwinners, four families also face the hard task of repaying the loan.

This is the second tragedy suffered by Nepal abroad after 12 workers were gunned down by militants in Iraq in 2004.

A US-based group, the Nepal Human Rights Organisation, was the first to condemn the killings, saying the incident violated the fundamental rights of people living and working in India.

'Nepalis travelling abroad in search of jobs are safe nowhere,' it said in a press release issued from Baltimore.

The killings come after Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala's visit to India earlier this month.

Copyright Indo-Asian News Service

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