Great Escape: Koirala's rough ride to freedom RANJAN ROY TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2005 11:49:08 PM ] Sign into earnIndiatimes points NEW DELHI: "I could have been killed by the Royal Nepal Army or Maoists. Or worse, I could have been eaten by tigers," says Sujata Koirala, a slight shiver convulsing her body as she pulls her black woollen shawl tighter. The daughter of Girija Prasad Koirala, prime minister until 2001 and for most of the 14 years that Nepal has had a democratic government, pauses for breath several times as she excitedly recounts her five-day trek from the Himalayan darkness to freedom in India. "I've never had such a terrible time, but I'll never forget this journey," she said in an exclusive interview to STOI on Saturday. Koirala, 54, says she slipped out of Kathmandu riding pillion on a motorcycle, a helmet covering her head and the same shawl draped across her face. "The army was searching cars, but they didn't think a former PM's daughter would escape on a bike." Her journey and the desperation to reach safety symbolises the struggle of the Nepali people, she says. Her father, 81, was put under house arrest the same day King Gyanendra sacked Sher Bahadur Deuba as prime minister, assumed full control and unleashed an army of 78,000 soldiers, crushing Nepal's democratic aspirations. "Had I tried to take a flight out, I would have been arrested. I know I was on a list of people the King's army intended to torture," she says, sitting in a south Delhi guest house room, crammed with a twin bed, a couch as well as a coffee table. Faced with that prospect, she chose an option "which I didn't realise would be the adventure of my life."