Nepali Royal Massacre

The Nepalese royal massacre occurred on the night of 1 June 2001, at the Narayanhiti Palace in Kathmandu, the residence of the House of Shah, the royal family of Nepal. During a private gathering of the royal family, Crown Prince Dipendra allegedly shot and killed ten members of his family, including his father King Birendra, his mother Queen Aishwarya, and his younger brother Prince Nirajan, before shooting himself.

Dipendra was declared king while in a coma and died three days later, after which his uncle Gyanendra ascended the throne. The massacre shocked the nation and the world, leading to widespread mourning and confusion. Official investigations concluded that Dipendra was responsible, although conspiracy theories persist about the true events and motivations behind the killings.

The tragedy significantly undermined public support for the monarchy, accelerating political changes that ultimately led to the abolition of the monarchy and the declaration of Nepal as a republic in 2008.

Incident

On 1 June 2001, a mass shooting took place at Narayanhity Palace, the official residence of the Nepalese monarchy. A two-man committee of Chief Justice Keshav Prasad Upadhyaya and Taranath Ranabhat, the speaker of the House of Representatives, conducted an official investigation into the killings. Based on eyewitness reports and the investigation, the committee concluded:

Crown Prince Dipendra opened fire inside a house on the palace grounds where a party was being held. He fatally shot his father, King Birendra, his mother, Queen Aishwarya, and seven other members of the royal family, including his younger brother and sister, before shooting himself in the head. Due to the deaths of most of the line of succession, Dipendra became king while in a coma resulting from his head wound.

The incident resulted in the deaths of ten members of the royal family and left the nation in shock.

Motives

Dipendra's motivation for the murders of his family remains unknown. One theory is connected to the inter-service agency, the Pakistani intelligence. According to "Kathmandu Chronicle: Reclaiming India Nepal Relations," written by former Indian Ambassador to Nepal K. V. Rajan and Atul K. Thakur, the Inter-service agency had a close relationship with the royal family, particularly Dipendra, through the D-Company Dawood Ibrahim led. They claim that the king's role in exposing Pakistan's terror-related activities in Nepal and India, as well as India's cross-border war equipment smuggling operation, made Dawood and Inter-service unhappy. Additionally, Dipendra was lured into Dawood's trap by his colleagues' use of drugs and alcohol.

Another theory is that Dipendra wanted to marry Devyani Rana, whom he had met in the UK. According to some, the royal family objected because her mother's family was from lower-class Indian royals and her father had political connections. In fact, Devyani's Gwalior family was one of the wealthiest former royal families of India and allegedly far wealthier than the Nepalese monarchs. The mother of the prospective bride warned her daughter that marrying the Nepalese crown prince would entail a more modest way of life.

Other theories claim that Dipendra was dissatisfied with the country's transition from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy, and that too much power had been ceded after the 1990 People's Movement. The palace objected to the idea that marrying Devyani would increase the likelihood of Indian influence.

The circumstances of the massacre are still controversial, and many questions remain unanswered even after the monarchy was abolished after the 2006 revolution. There are still unanswered questions about the following: the event's apparent lack of security; the absence of the Prince Gyanendra, Dipendra's uncle who succeeded him; Dipendra's self-inflicted head wound at his left temple, despite being right-handed; and the length of the subsequent investigation, which lasted only two weeks and featured no significant forensic analysis, even though Scotland Yard offered to conduct one.

Victims

Deceased

* King Birendra – Reigning monarch of Nepal.
* Queen Aishwarya – Wife of King Birendra.
* Crown Prince Dipendra – Son of King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya; alleged perpetrator.
* Prince Nirajan – Younger son of King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya.
* Princess Shruti – Daughter of King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya.
* Prince Dhirendra – Brother of King Birendra who had renounced his title.
* Princess Shanti – Eldest sister of King Birendra.
* Princess Sharada – Middle sister of King Birendra.
* Kumar Khadga – Husband of Princess Sharada.
* Princess Jayanti – First cousin of King Birendra.

Injured

* Princess Shova – Sister of King Birendra.
* Kumar Gorakh – Husband of Princess Shruti.
* Princess Komal – Wife of Prince Gyanendra; later became the last queen of Nepal.
* Ketaki Chester – First cousin of King Birendra who had renounced her royal title.

Family tree

Aftermath

The following day, the members of the royal family were given a state funeral and were cremated in front of Pashupatinath Temple. Dipendra was proclaimed king while comatose but died on 4 June 2001. Gyanendra was appointed regent for the three days, and then ascended the throne himself after the death of Dipendra.

When Dipendra was unconscious, Gyanendra maintained that the deaths were the result of an "accidental discharge of an automatic weapon" within the royal palace. Later, he said that he made this claim due to "legal and constitutional hurdles" since under the constitution and by tradition, Dipendra could not have been charged with murder had he survived. A full investigation took place and Dipendra was found responsible for the killing.

A two-man committee comprising Chief Justice Keshav Prasad Upadhyaya and Speaker of the House Taranath Ranabhat carried out a week-long investigation concerning the massacre. The investigation concluded, after interviewing more than a hundred people including eyewitnesses and palace officials, guards, and staff, that Dipendra was the perpetrator of the shooting. However, observers both inside Nepal and abroad disputed Dipendra's culpability in the incident.

The massacre added to the political turmoil caused by the Maoist insurgency. Following the ascension of Gyanendra, the monarchy lost much of the approval of the Nepalese populace. Some say this massacre was the pivotal point that ended the monarchy in Nepal.

On 12 June 2001, a Hindu katto ceremony was held to exorcise or banish the spirit of the dead king from Nepal. A Hindu priest, Durga Prasad Sapkota, dressed as Birendra to symbolise the late king, rode an elephant out of Kathmandu and into symbolic exile, taking many of the monarch's belongings with him.

Conspiracy theories

King Birendra and his son Dipendra were very popular and well-respected by the Nepalese population. On the day of the massacre, Gyanendra was in Pokhara whilst other royals were attending the dinner function. His wife Komal, their son Paras, and their daughter Prerana were in the room at the royal palace during the massacre. While the entire families of Birendra and Dipendra were killed, nobody in Gyanendra's family died: his son escaped with slight injuries, and his wife sustained a life-threatening bullet wound but survived. This gave rise to conspiracy theories.

Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda), the chairman of the Nepalese Maoist Party, publically claimed that the massacre was planned by the Indian Research and Analysis Wing or the American Central Intelligence Agency. Since the massacre, some eyewitness statements have been released such as, "multiple people with the mask of the Crown Prince Dipendra were present in the room at one point." The bodies of some of the royal family members were found elsewhere in the palace and not the dining hall, whereas Dipendra was cited as one of the first ones to have been shot. There is a book titled "Raktakunda" based on interviews of two palace maids which details these theories. Promoters of these ideas alleged Gyanendra had a hand in the massacre so that he could assume the throne himself. His ascent to the throne would have been possible only if both of his nephews, Dipendra and Nirajan, were removed from the line of succession. Moreover, Gyanendra and his son Prince Paras were very unpopular. An eyewitness of the royal massacre, Lal Bahadur Magar, claims that Paras is the main man behind the whole massacre. Magar was one of the bodyguards of Crown Prince Dipendra at that time.

Claims such as: that the perpetrator was not Dipendra but an individual who wore a mask to disguise himself as Dipendra; that Paras broke and threw away Dipendra's ventilator in hospital; that 900 were killed in the palace that night and the purpose of the curfews was to allow the disposal of their bodies; that the public water supply and milk had been poisoned in Kathmandu, etc., have circulated in Nepalese media. Conspiracy theories have also blamed Ketaki Chester, Upendra Devkota, or the Nepalese army for the massacre. However, no reliable evidence have been found for these claims.

In popular culture

*''Murder Most Royal'' or ''Nepal: Murder Most Royal'' is a 2002 documentary by Donna Sharpe produced for the BBC and aired on BBC2. It details the reasons for Dipendra perpetrating the massacre, including his forbidden marriage with Devyani Rana.
* ''Super Star'' (also released as ''Stupid''), a 2002 Indian film loosely based on the love story of Dipendra of Nepal and Devyani Rana, and the Nepalese royal massacre.
*The massacre is featured in the third season of the documentary series '' Zero Hour'', based on a reconstruction of the event taken from surviving eyewitnesses.
* The back story of Pagan Min, the main antagonist of the game '' Far Cry 4'' (Ubisoft, 2014), which takes place in the fictional (but based on Nepal) kingdom of Kyrat seems to refer to this event in a modified version.

See also

* List of massacres in Nepal
* List of regicides
*2009 attack on the Dutch royal family
* Murder of the Romanov family

References

Bibliography

* Garzilli, Enrica, "A Sanskrit Letter Written by Sylvain Lévi in 1923 to Hemarāja Śarmā Along With Some Hitherto Unknown Biographical Notes (Cultural Nationalism and Internationalism in the First Half of the 21st Cent.: Famous Indologists Write to the Raj Guru of Nepal – no. 1)", in ''Commemorative Volume for 30 Years of the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project. Journal of the Nepal Research Centre'', XII (2001), Kathmandu, ed. by A. Wezler in collaboration with H. Haffner, A. Michaels, B. Kölver, M. R. Pant and D. Jackson, pp. 115–149.
* Garzilli, Enrica, "Strage a palazzo, movimento dei Maoisti e crisi di governabilità in Nepal", in ''Asia Major 2002'', pp. 143–160.
* Garzilli, Enrica, "A Sanskrit Letter Written by Sylvain Lévy in 1925 to Hemarāja Śarmā along with Some Hitherto Unknown Biographical Notes (Cultural Nationalism and Internationalism in the First Half of the 20th Century – Famous Indologists write to the Raj Guru of Nepal – No. 2)", in ''History of Indological Studies. Papers of the 12th World Sanskrit Conference Vol. 11.2'', ed. by K. Karttunen, P. Koskikallio and A. Parpola, Motilal Banarsidass and University of Helsinki, Delhi 2015, pp. 17–53.

External links

Trapped in tradition
(Frontline: India's National Magazine)


Synopsis of the Investigation Committee's report
''Wall Street Journal''.

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