But we were taken aback, very sad and seething with an impotent anger. The delicious food, which the wife had prepared in expectation of good news, looked so stale with no taste. The liquor we found had vapourised. How I found the night disturbed. I could hardly sleep. It was nocturnal night for me; I had feelings as if I was hearing non-stop silent cry, which broke in resistant sobbing. I was haunted by eerie howling. I was perturbed with nagging Questions: was my effort worthwhile? It was my best-prepared case, which was impressively argued baring relevant facts, exposing the findings of the lower court in contradiction to the law, facts and evidences with subtleties, nuances and emphasis in rational and logical arguments. How we had argued thread bare to expose the absence of corpus delicti or fact of crime as facts and evidences did not connect with the crime of attempt to assault and overawe the king by show of force. We emphasized how injustice had been meted out in the prosecution and by the verdict of the special Court. We had argued through the example of several countries, why death penalty, the severest form of punishment was not generally given when the legislation provided lesser punishment, in the instant case, 10 years imprisonment, as alternative. How light was rekindled in the eyes of a large number of people who flocked to listen the arguments. They had conveyed their confidence to me. Even the judges looked convinced as conveyed by their brimming smile. After all, there was natural course to call the other party to discuses the salient points raised or even the issue of reduction of sentence, which was a common or usual judicial practice. However, subterranean forces overlaid the natural flow of the situation. How I was cock- sure. That's why I had gone to Hille for repose and rest. Now that ripple of pleasures was torturous at that dead of night. It was quiet night but haunted by nocturnal sobbing. We had to leave Dhankuta at the wee hour. She was at the gate to bid us bye pinning all her hopes upon us. I could guess that she was sobbing all night. Slowly and with heavy heart we walked. The chautara otherwise a merry--spot looked so damned. I was condemning myself for foolish jokes I made on my arrival. Suddenly a pool of life gusto with laughter and merrymaking turned into a deserted place. My life had has been haunted by the forsaken but hopeful images. Why did I assured and enthused with the bright hope? I ought to have known that judges are attuned with art of jockeying with the power-center. How Basudev Sharma and his junior judge Jhapat Singh Rawal did uphold the decision on February 17, 1977 without having patient to hear arguments. How gleefully and jokingly they mocked the hapless appellants that their guilt were proven and for that warranted severest punishment. To exhibit their obeisance, the judges cited varied sections of Crown Succession Act, 1958, which were not indicted or referred by the prosecution and which had no relevance to the case. How justice was nakedly assaulted by the judges of the highest court. How their faces betrayed them with the expectation of reward after retirement. Of course they were rewarded with lucrative posts. When situation changed how Basudev Sharma behaved like chameleon, and changed his version by shifting his responsibility on the then chief justice Nayan Bahadur. He pleaded how he, the hapless Judge, was compelled to deliver that verdict. What a shameless judge! And how hope was rekindled in the prisoner and his family! With the return of BP with his message of national reconciliation and subsequent events especially the acquittal judgement in favour of BP and Ganesh Man had set the Nepalese nation into the path of tolerant and liberal polity. Bhim Narayan had bright and smiling hope for pardon or, at least, remission. So also the family had carried hope - a last straw in life! How could they guess the ugly face of leviathan! Oh! That troublesome resonance! In that particular morning I had gone in my walk with my stripe new suit on my way to office. Perhaps, I had to meet some important personality or attend certain reception. When I reached office I saw my trusted friend Prakash Wosti in his sad face drowned in a newspaper. I was surprised at his unusual poise. I asked him "Prakash, what's wrong with you?' In tears in his eyes, he conveyed news how Bhim Narayan had been executed by firing squad in the remote dense forest. Aghast, I looked the paper. Oh! An unenviable lust for life of an aspiring young man had been forcefully extinguished and the last hope of a long suffering and anguished lady was brutally murdered! I saw the pale, weeping and sobbing figure of a lady accusing me - how could you give me a false assurance? What a blunder to believe in the impartiality and independence of judiciary and benevolence of the king! How could milk of mercy, empathy and humane could trickle down in the heart of a Hobbesian monarch insulated in the cobweb of leviathan! How the king felt assured that he could be more secured by meting out harsh, cruel and inhuman punishment so that none could dare to raise finger at the monarch. What gratitude would had been expressed to the king had his life been spared. After all, his long incarceration had extinguished his will to rebel even if he had one. How he prayed the king time and again for sparing his tortured life to live with family with contentment. How long-suffering lady would bless the king in gratitude for salvaging her from the torturous separation from her darling man! What wisdom was imparted by Leo Tolstoy in his three Questions, the story I read long time ago and now I faintly remembered. How a king sojourned at a desolate forest to seek wisdom from the seer. How the king nursed and assuaged an injured man. He happened to be a rebel who targeted on the life of the king. And how the rebel turned into best defender of the crown due to the king's best wishes and succor. And how the king got the wisdom. The most important time is the present time, the most important person is one whom you meet and render help in time of need! But how an intoxicated king with power could see the wisdom! But why the king in power and absolutism could vouchsafe the rationality and humanness of pardon for sparing an invaluable life! Time and again, during moments of my solitude especially after midnight when sleep eluded me, an image of a lady living in an edge of life with hope against hope shimmered in the innermost of my heart with a troubling question mark. To assuage my tormented soul, I philosophize: oh yes, one and every one has to die: some dies naturally, some in accident, some by the execution by the leviathan in connivance with compliant judiciary. Some die in pre meditated murder, and some die in the heinous conspiratorial massacre like king Birendra with his successors succumbed to extinction by an inexplicable and mysterious regicide. (Published in Kanoon Magazine) __