Gyanendra Khadka’s wife, Mithila, with their children Aswin and Asmita: The journalist was murdered by the Maoists in Nepal's civil war. Photo: Kunda Dixit/Nepal Times

Pacific Scoop:
By Kunda Dixit in Kathmandu

It was 6 September 2004. Gyanendra Khadka had just spoken at a gathering of teachers and guardians of a high school in Jyamire of Sindhupalchok in Nepal.

Four men in shorts approached him, tied his hands behind his back and led him away. “We’ll bring him back in a while,” they said, brandishing a pistol.

It was during the height of the war, and no one dared to follow. As Gyanendra passed his house, his daughter Ajita saw him being led away.

“I’ll be back, go home,” he told his daughter. Ajita, who was only 10 years old then, ran in and told her mother what she had seen.

The captors had tied Gyanendra to a volleyball pole. They told Mithila Khadka to take one last look at her husband. The last thing she remembers before fainting is one of the assailants taking out a long khukuri.

Gyanendra Khadka’s throat was slit from the front and then chopped from behind. His slumped head was attached to the rest of his body only by a slender strand of muscle.

Gyanendra’s friend and fellow-journalist, Yubaraj Puri, trembles as he shows me the spot where the volleyball court used to be. Nearly six years later, the memory of that murder still haunts him.

Too scared
A rooster crows nearby. The scent from the mustard fields fills the air. The sky is deep blue and the icy twin peaks of Dorje Lakpa shine in the bright winter sun.

Gyanendra’s body was still there the next day. His family and neighbours were too scared to remove his body.

Yubaraj borrowed a camera and took pictures while tears streamed down his face. He helped the family organise the funeral, and filed the story for national newspapers, which printed the pictures on their front pages.

The Maoists sent word that they’d kill him too. So, he quit his teaching job and returned back to his village only after the ceasefire in 2006.

The first time Yubaraj Puri’s name appeared with the picture he had taken of Gyanendra Khadka’s body was in the book A People War. The killer is known. The mastermind of the murder is now a personal assistant to a senior Maoist leader.

Mithila never got over the horror of her husband’s murder. Ajita is now studying in Kathmandu. Gyanendra’s other children, Aswin and Asmita, study in the school where their father was a teacher.

Life a struggle
The extended family pitches in to help. But life is a struggle for Mithila.

Yubaraj Puri’s photograph of his friend Gyanendra Khadka’s body a day after his murder in Jyamire, Sindhupalchok.

When I was awarded the Surya Bhakta Patanadebi Memorial National Journalism Prize in December in Kawasoti of Nawalparasi for the trilogy of books I edited on the conflict, I had said the prize honoured the memory of all nine journalists who had laid down their lives during the conflict.

I promised to hand over the Rs 15,101 prize to Gyanendra Khadka’s family. My publisher, Kiran Shrestha of nepa-laya, and I travelled with Yubaraj to Jyamire last week to hand over Rs 30,101 to Mithila.

Mithila broke down in tears. Gyanendra’s brother hugged me and sobbed uncontrollably. Gyanendra’s father said: “The most important thing is for us to know that you haven’t forgotten us.”

Kunda Dixit is the editor of the Nepali Times and author of several books, including the trilogy on the conflict in Nepal: A People War, Never Again and People After War. His blog is Eastwest.

David Robie’s review of A People War is on the Scoop Review of Books.