Marriage dispute ‘triggered massacre’

Eyewitnesses of Crown Prince Dipendra’s massacre of his parents and seven other royals during a family dinner told government investigators in Nepal that the prince went on the rampage because of his parents’ opposition to his choice of bride.

However, the government said today that it would not investigate Dipendra’s motive further, even as it released a full report on its probe on the mass killing that has shocked this Himalayan nation.

A two-member panel comprising Supreme Court Chief Justice Keshav Prasad Upadhyaya and House Speaker Taranath Ranabhat investigated the case for a week before confirming that Dipendra was the lone gunman.

The report said the 29-year-old prince was high on hashish and alcohol when he carried out the June 1 massacre.

’’We don’t know. We only probed what we were told to find,’’ Ranabhat said Saturday when asked about the motive. Though the contents of the report were made public on Thursday, details were made available only today.

Many Nepalese have refused to believe that the crown prince opened fire at the gathering at Narayanhiti Palace, killing his parents King Birendra and Queen Aiswarya his brother and sister, two aunts, an uncle and two others.

In interviews published in the report, Paras, the son of new king Gyanendra, told the investigators that the marriage issue was the motive for the killings.

’’This issue was already raised since Dipendra’s last birthday (June 27) at the same place. Me and Niranjan were with him, but Shruti, Gorakh (Shruti’s husband) and other sisters were against this wedding. This was the main issue,’’ Paras told the investigators.

Niranjan and Shruti were Dipendra’s siblings. Gyanendra is the younger brother of King Birendra.

Paras told the investigators that Dipendra appeared intoxicated and when he asked the crown prince what was troubling him, Dipendra said it was the marriage issue.

’’I talked to mother and the queen mother, they said no. I will now talk about this with father on Sunday,’’ Paras quoted Dipendra as saying just before the killing.

Palace officials and other sources have said Dipendra quarrelled with his mother over his choice of a bride. The queen disapproved of the young woman, Devyani Rana, because she was from a separate clan.

Rana, who was asked to appear before the panel but refused, was interviewed by the Nepalese Ambassador Bhesh Bahadur Thapa in New Delhi, where she has been living since the massacre. She refused to comment on her relationship with Dipendra.

’’This is a personal matter. I don’t want to talk about it,’’ Devyani told the ambassador, the report said.

The report, however, established a close relationship between Dipendra and Rana.

’’Devyani is Sarkar (Dipendra)’s girlfriend ... the relationship has been continuing since the past seven to nine years,’’ said Raju Kumar Karki, Dipendra’s personal body guard of 11 years.

The investigators also said that Dipendra called Devyani Rana three times before he walked into the billiard room of the Narayanhiti Palace in military fatigues and shot his family with a machine gun.

Dr Krishna Chandra Rajbhandari, an independent psychologist interviewed by the panel, said a combination of drugs and alcohol can make the user irritable and out of control.

The report said Dipendra had asked an aide for cigarettes laced with hashish and another unidentified black substance. The aide, Gajendra Bohra, told the panel that the crown prince had been smoking such cigarettes for a year.

The investigators interviewed more than 100 people, including eyewitnesses, staff at the royal palace, firearms and forensic experts, medical doctors and legal advisers in their week-long probe into the massacre.