Thapa did not commit suicide: HURON A leading human rights group has claimed that Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) soldier, Basudev Thapa-- who killed one dozen villagers at a local fair at Nagarkot on Wednesday -- did not commit suicide as being reported by officials and some section of the media. The Human Rights Organisation of Nepal (HURON) has also accused the RNA of trying to cover up the incident. Addressing a press meet in Kathmandu on Saturday, the HURON said its eight-member probe team found that the Royal Nepalese Army personnel had removed evidence like cartridge shells, firearms and blood stain and clothes from the site at Chihandada village in Nagarkot VDC, some 28 km east of Kathmandu. The army had blamed soldier, Basudev Thapa, for resorting to shooting spree after a brawl with local youths during the fair. The army further said Thapa turned the gun on himself after the incident. However, the rights activists said Thapa's body had bullet wounds in the chest that were unlikely to be self-inflicted. At a press conference here Saturday, Kathmandu-based Huron said a Nepali daily had reported in its editorial that Thapa, who had picked up a fight with some people at the fair, returned from the barracks around midnight with five other companions in plainclothes. Huron said that the army was yet to rebut the report. The HURON team quoted eyewitnesses as saying that instead of sealing the scene of crime, soldiers arrived there on Thursday morning and tried to clean up the blood and carried away arms and cartridge shells. Qualified doctors did not do the post- mortem of the bodies in the hospital, the rights group said. Malla K. Sundar, a member of the HURON probe team, said this was not the first time the army had been involved in human rights violations. "They have killed civilians and tried to project it as an encounter with Maoists, they have raped and killed schoolchildren," he said. "This is the result of the culture of impunity that protects perpetrators in the Royal Nepalese Army." Another investigator and former member of the National Human Rights Commission, Kapil Shrestha, said the killings were a civilian crime. "When the government has instituted a commission headed by a former judge to investigate the shootout, there's no rationale for the army to institute a separate probe panel," he said. "This shows the army is running a parallel government in Nepal." The team also said that it was a common sight to see soldiers carrying weapons even when they were not in uniform. "The army is deliberately encouraging this kind of indiscipline and it would prove to be very damaging in the long run," he said. The RNA is yet to respond to the HURON report. nepalnews.com by Dec 17 05