“I was beaten up and abused so bad at Police Headquarters,” tells Hom Bahadur Bagale, a sub-inspector of Nepal police. He entered the Kantipur Complex bruised and battered all over his body and half his head shaven “forcefully”, in uniform on Tuesday afternoon, seeking refuge. He showed the media persons, present at the complex, his scars and scratches, which he claimed were signs of police abuse at the headquarters. He also claimed that police forcefully shaved half his head to humiliate him. “I have been harassed and punished by police authorities for speaking against the irregularities of my seniors,” he said. He claimed that he was beaten and thrown into a pond inside police headquarters when he went to inquire about his resignation. “Instead, they gave me a dismissal letter stripping me of my pension,” he said. Immediately, as one of the journalists called police headquarters to inquire about his claims, in a dramatic move that followed, a group of policemen in uniform entered Kantipur Complex. Hom Bahadur Bagale is arrested by police and forcibly removed from the offices of Kantipur Publications. He was being interviewed by Kantipur journalists about his role as the victim of police brutality, when the police broke into the room, apprehended him, and took him away in a van parked outside Kantipur premises. Meanwhile, a press release issued by the Secretariat of the Inspector General of Police, same evening, refuted the claims made by sub-inspector Bagale saying that the man is a fraud. It said Bagale had allegedly failed to return gold he had taken from former DSP Khadga Singh Gurung. So, Bagale was subjected to departmental action, it said. Earlier, Bagale had filed a case at Kathmandu District Court for compensation for torture. He has accused police officers of torturing him while in detention at Hanuman Dhoka Police Office.