Nepali royal massacre | |
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Location | Tribhuvan Sadan, Narayanhiti Durbar, Kathmandu, Nepal |
Coordinates | 27°42′56″N85°19′12″E / 27.7156°N 85.32°E |
Date | 1 June 2001 (19 Jestha 2058 Nepal B.S.); June 1, 2001 Around 21:00 (UTC+05:45) |
Target | The Nepalese royal family |
Attack type | Mass shooting, familicide, regicide, murder suicide |
Weapons |
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Deaths | 10 (including the perpetrator) |
Injured | 5 |
Perpetrator | Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal [2] |
History of Nepal |
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Nepalportal |
The Nepali royal massacre occurred on 1 June 2001 at the Narayanhiti Palace, the then-residence of the Nepali monarchy. Nine members of the royal family, including King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya, were killed in a mass shooting during a gathering of the royal family at the palace. [3] A government-appointed inquiry team named Crown Prince Dipendra as perpetrator of the massacre. [4] Dipendra slipped into a coma after shooting himself in the head. [5]
Dipendra was declared King of Nepal while comatose after the death of King Birendra. He died in hospital three days after the massacre without regaining consciousness. Birendra's brother Gyanendra then became king. [6]
This section needs additional citations for verification .(November 2021) |
According to eyewitness reports and an official investigation carried out by a two-man committee made up of Chief Justice Keshav Prasad Upadhyaya and Taranath Ranabhat, the speaker of the House of Representatives concluded:
On 1 June 2001, Crown Prince Dipendra opened fire at a house on the grounds of the Narayanhity Palace, the residence of the Nepalese monarchy, where a party was being held. He shot and killed 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 his wiping out of most of the line of succession, Dipendra became king while in a comatose state from the head wound. [5]
Dipendra's motive for the murders is unknown, and there are various theories. Dipendra wanted to marry Devyani Rana, whom he had met in the United Kingdom. Some allege that, due to her mother's family being from lower-class royals of India and her father's political alliances, the royal family objected. In fact, Devyani's Gwalior family were one of the wealthiest former royal families of India, and allegedly far wealthier than the Nepalese monarchs. The prospective bride's mother warned her daughter that marrying the Nepalese crown prince might mean a drop in her standard of living. Dipendra's prospective bride, chosen by the royal family, was from the main branch of the Nepalese Rana dynasty, the Chandra Shumsher line. [7]
Another theory states that there was a higher possibility of Indian influence if Dipendra would be married to Devyani, to which the palace objected. Other theories allege that Dipendra was unhappy with the country's shift from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy, and that too much power had been given away following the 1990 People's Movement. [5]
Much controversy surrounds the circumstances of the massacre, and even today, with the abolition of the monarchy following the 2006 revolution, many questions remain unanswered. [8] Questions that remain unsolved include: the apparent lack of security at the event; the absence of the Prince Gyanendra, Dipendra's uncle who succeeded him; Dipendra's self-inflicted head-wound located at his left temple, although he was right-handed; and the duration of the subsequent investigation, which lasted for only two weeks and did not involve any major forensic analysis, despite an offer by Scotland Yard to carry one out. [8]
This section needs additional citations for verification .(April 2019) |
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. [11] 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. [12] A full investigation took place and Dipendra was found responsible for the killing.
A two-man committee comprising Chief Justice Keshav Prasad Upadhaya and Speaker of the House Taranath Ranabhat carried out a week-long investigation concerning the massacre. [13] 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. [14] However, observers both inside Nepal and abroad disputed Dipendra's culpability in the incident. [15]
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. [16]
King Birendra and his son Dipendra were very popular and well-respected by the Nepalese population. [17] 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, [18] and his wife sustained a life-threatening bullet wound but survived. This gave rise to conspiracy theories. [19]
Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda), the chairman of the Nepalese Maoist Party, in a public gathering claimed that the massacre was planned by the Indian Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) or the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). 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. [20] 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. One of the 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. [21]
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. [22]
The Kingdom of Nepal was a Hindu kingdom in South Asia, formed in 1768 by the expansion of the Gorkha Kingdom, which lasted until 2008 when the kingdom became the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. It was also known as the Gorkha Empire, or sometimes Asal Hindustan. Founded by King Prithvi Narayan Shah, a Gorkha monarch who claimed to be of Khas Thakuri origin, it existed for 240 years until the abolition of the Nepalese monarchy in 2008. During this period, Nepal was formally under the rule of the Shah dynasty, which exercised varying degrees of power during the kingdom's existence.
Dipendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev was King of Nepal for three days from 1 to 4 June 2001. For the duration of his three-day reign he was in a coma after he had reportedly shot his father, King Birendra, his mother, Queen Aishwarya, his younger brother and sister, five other members of the royal family and himself on 1 June. Upon Dipendra's death, his paternal uncle Gyanendra became king.
Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev is a former monarch and the last King of Nepal, reigning from 2001 to 2008. As a child, he was briefly king from 1950 to 1951, when his grandfather, Tribhuvan, took political exile in India with the rest of his family. His second reign began after the 2001 Nepalese royal massacre. Gyanendra Shah is the first person in the history of Nepal to be king twice and the last king of the Shah dynasty of Nepal.
Prince Nirajan Bir Bikram Shah Dev was a prince of Nepal, the younger son of King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya of Nepal. He and his parents were killed during the Nepalese royal massacre by Nirajan's elder brother Dipendra.
Aishwarya Rajya Lakshmi Devi Shah was the Queen of Nepal from 1972 to 2001, also referred to as Bada Maharani (बडामहारानी). She was the wife of King Birendra and the mother of King Dipendra, Prince Nirajan, and Princess Shruti. She was the eldest among the three daughters of the late General Kendra Shumsher Jang Bahadur Rana and Shree Rajya Lakshmi Devi Shah in Lazimpat Durbar, Lazimpat, Kathmandu.
Devyani Rana is the second daughter of Pashupati Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana and Rani Usha Raje Scindia, daughter of Jiwaji Rao Scindia, the last maharaja of Gwalior, and the wife of Aishwarya Singh. News reports in 2001 suggested that the Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal wanted to marry her, but his parents did not agree, and that the refusal was the cause of the Nepalese royal massacre, although other reasons have been suggested as well.
Paras Shah or Paras, Former Crown Prince of Nepal is the former and last Crown Prince of Nepal, the heir apparent to the throne, from 2001 until the abolition of the monarchy by the Interim Constituent Assembly in 2008 following the Constituent Assembly election.
The Shah dynasty, also known as the Shahs of Gorkha or the Royal House of Gorkha, was the ruling Chaubise Thakuri Rajput dynasty and the founder of the Gorkha Kingdom from 1559 to 1768 and later the unified Kingdom of Nepal from 1768 to 28 May 2008.
Ratna Rajya Lakshmi Devi Shah is a member of the Nepalese royal family who was queen consort of Nepal from 1955 to 1972 and queen dowager from 1972 to 2008 when the royal family were stripped of all titles and privileges. She is the second wife of King Mahendra (1920–1972). Ratna belongs to the aristocratic Rana family and is the daughter of Field Marshal Hari Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana and his wife, Megha Kumari Rajya Lakshmi.
Hridayendra Shah is a member of the former Nepalese Royal Family and was the second in line to Nepal's royal throne. The monarchy was officially abolished on 28 May 2008. Until the abolition of the monarchy he was known in Nepal by the title Nava Yuvaraj.
Purnika Rajya Laxmi Devi Shah is a former Princess of Nepal. She is the eldest daughter of Paras, the former Crown Prince of Nepal and former Crown Princess Himani. She is a granddaughter of former King Gyanendra and Queen Komal.
Komal is a member of the Nepalese royal family who was Queen of Nepal as the wife of King Gyanendra of Nepal until the monarchy was abolished on 28 May 2008. She is also known by the name Komal Shah.
The Narayanhiti Palace Museum is a public museum in Kathmandu, Nepal located east of the Kaiser Mahal and next to Thamel. The museum was created in 2008 from the complex of the former Narayanhiti Palace following the 2006 revolution. Before the revolution, the palace was the residence and principal workplace of the monarch of the Kingdom of Nepal, and hosted occasions of state.
Prince Dhirendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev of Nepal was the youngest son of King Mahendra of Nepal and his first wife, Crown Princess Indra.
The King of Nepal (traditionally known as the Mahārājdhirāja i.e. Great King of Kings; it can also be translated as "Sovereign Emperor" was Nepal's head of state and monarch from 1768 to 2008. He served as the head of the Nepalese monarchy—Shah Dynasty. The monarchy was abolished on 28 May 2008 by the 1st Constituent Assembly. The subnational monarchies in Mustang, Bajhang, Salyan, and Jajarkot were abolished in October of the same year.
Events from the year 2001 in Nepal.
Princess Shova Shahi of Nepal or Shova Rajya Lakshmi Devi is a former princess of Nepal. She is the youngest daughter of King Mahendra of Nepal. She is the only remaining daughter of King Mahendra; her older sisters Princess Shanti and Princess Sharada were murdered during the Nepalese royal massacre along with King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev and his family.
Princess Helen Rajya Lakshmi Devi Shah of Nepal was a member of the former Nepalese royal family. She was the wife of Prince Basundhara of Nepal, a son of King Tribhuvan of Nepal and his second wife, Queen Ishwari.
A coup d'état in Nepal began on 1 February, when democratically elected members of the country's ruling party, the Nepali Congress were deposed by Gyanendra, King of Nepal. The parliament was reinstated in 2006, when the king agreed to give up absolute power following the 2006 revolution. The coup was condemned by India, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The Tribhuvan Sadan is a mansion in the Narayanhiti Palace, Kathmandu, Nepal. It is known for being the site of the Nepalese royal massacre where ten members of the royal family, including King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya, and Crown Prince Dipendra were killed. The mansion was formerly occupied by King Tribhuvan and his family and later by Dipendra, Crown Prince of Nepal. The Tribhuvan Sadan was demolished after the orders of the Queen Mother Ratna however It is currently being reconstructed.