A district chief of Nepal, who is also the chairperson of District Child Welfare Committee, has jailed five children under 16 years of age against the law of Nepal, according to the Nayapatrika daily published on 27 February. Imprisoning children with adult prisoners is not allowed by Nepal’s law. It is surprising that Nepal’s law enforcement head of a district does not bother about acting according to the law.
Surkhet district Chief Anil Kumar Pandey has asked the five under-16 children, accused of telephone wire theft, a bail amount of Rs.158,000 (nearly US$2500.00) each. Ghanashyam Chaudhari, Karna BK, Man Bahadur BK, Kaluram Chaudhari and Shakti Nepali, ranging from 14 to 15 years of age, all belong to the deprived community and cannot afford the bail amount for their release. As they have not paid the bail amount demanded by the district administration, they are still in jail for more than nine weeks.
The accusations labeled on them have not been verified through systematic investigations. In Nepal, most of the court cases are settled on the basis of statements signed in the police custody.
Nepal’s law clearly states that children whose crimes have been proved must not be kept along with adult prisoners. They instead should be housed separately so as to improve their habits through education and training.
Nepal’s district heads are known as CDOs (Chief District Officers). They are expected to be fair and justice-minded public administrators. But just the opposite is happening. Most of the CDOs are appointed not on the basis of moral and intellectual merits but on the basis of their business and political links. They visit businesspersons and political leaders personally in their houses and reduce their actual working hours in their public offices.
Because of their authority to mobilize security forces at any place at any time, they are considered the most powerful persons in a district. But as crimes have been on rise, people think the registered criminal cases have been a matter of brokering and illegal earning for some authorities.
When ordinary people visit district administration offices, it is customary to find district heads telephoning and arranging time for personally meeting businesspersons in their own apartments. This shows how removed Nepal’s public authorities are from public-spirited services.
The talkers of New Nepal must understand such basics of public administration that has the official responsibility of implementing the law and order and performing day-to-day administrative jobs for the general public.
The imprisonment of the above-mentioned five children shows the level of the district chief’s input and insight as regards his responsibility. At the same time, it gives a clue that there might be hundreds of other similar cases. A clerk working in the Lalitpur District Court said, “I still remember a case that came here 14 years ago. It was about the theft of a television set. A man was accused of stealing a television. He was a worker in a carpet factory at Godawari village. The accusation was not proved. Later, the police accused him of stealing telephone wire from the premises of Nepal Telecom at Jawalakhel. The police tortured him so much that he signed in the confession statement for survival.” “The same year,” the clerk adds, “I saw 18 persons belonging to the most deprived community in this district being charged with murder for which not a single piece of evidence was available.”
This shows the way justice systems work in an ill-governed society. The World Bank and other international institutions regularly advocating for good governance should break their habit of determining their policy approaches on the basis of what elite rulers and their representatives prefer. Reaching the suffering and deprived communities is a challenge for all.
Leave Your Comments