|
KATHMANDU, 2 Jun 2009: As relatives grieved and the body
of the third victim of the Nepal church bombing was
consigned to flames, police said they had arrested the
Nepali woman who had planted the bomb that killed three
people at prayer and injured more than a dozen.
“We arrested Sita Shrestha nee Thapa, a 27-year-old
woman, who confessed she had taken the bomb to the
Assumption Church in her handbag and hidden it in the
prayer hall,” deputy inspector-general of police and
spokesman of the force Vinod Singh told TNN.
Shrestha, a resident of Gyaneshwor in Kathmandu, was
arrested from a different place — Baneshwor — at 3am
Tuesday after investigation. Soon after the blast on May
23, the new government of Prime Minister Madhav Kumar
Nepal had formed a three-member team to probe the
attack.
Calling a press conference in the capital Tuesday to
disclose the arrest, police said Shrestha would be kept
in custody till investigations are complete. She would
be produced in court in due course, police said.
While the arrested woman reportedly confessed she
belonged to a group called the Hindu Rashtra Bachao
Samiti that aims to have Hindusim back in Nepal as the
state religion, it was not known immediately if she was
a member of the shadowy underground group Nepal Defence
Army (NDA), which claimed responsibility for the
bombing. “She said she was motivated by the NDA,” Singh
said.
Shrestha is alleged to have carried a pressure cooker
converted into a bomb in a bulky handbag. She went to
the prayer hall of the church, pushed her bag under a
floor cushion and then went out, saying she was going to
the toilet. She never came back.
Around 9am, the bomb went off, killing 15-year-old
Celeste Joseph, whose father Balan Joseph is from
Kerala, and 19-year-old Deepa Patrick, who had come from
Patna with her husband Vikash four days ago for their
honeymoon. On Monday, after fighting for life for a
week, Celeste’s mother Buddha Laxmi Joseph died of
haemorrhage, throwing the family into fresh paroxysms of
grief. The 45-year-old mother of three was cremated in
Teku Tuesday after her last rites in the same church
where she died.
The NDA, headed by Ram Prasad Mainali, has in the past
bombed two mosques in the Terai, killing two people
during prayer, and a church in Biratnagar in eastern
Nepal. They also took responsibility for a blast at a
meeting of the major political parties last month and
one more near the International Convention Centre last
May where the newly elected constituent assembly held
its historic first meeting to abolish monarchy in Nepal.
Doubts however would remain about the police claim. In
the past, police claimed a wellknown journalist was
involved with an armed group from the Terai and arrested
him on the basis of “confessions” by two other
journalists. However, there are reports that journalist
Rishi Dhamala was framed for activities that embarrassed
the earlier Maoist government.
|
