R.K.Budhatokhi, a senior Bhutanese refugee leader, was murdered Sunday under mysterious circumstances in Jhapa in east Nepal which is home to 100,000 Bhutanese refugees living in UNHCR administered camps since 11 years, refugee sources said.

Budhatokhi was founder and president of the Bhutan People’s Party (BPP) in exile in Nepal. Budhatokhi was hacked to death with a khukri by a lone person at a inner party meeting of 13 members of the Youth Organization of Bhutan, a front of the BPP, refugee sources said.

The murder took place at the party’s headquarters in Damak after the BPP meet. Tt was not known how the murder weapon was smuggled into the meeting room.

The assassin suspected to be a refugee from one of the camps in Jhapa escaped in a car with four waiting occupants, Rakesh Chetri, a refugee leader said. Police are on a lookout for them.

“This is probably the work of external elements. We will know something tomorrow. This cannot be the work of refugee groups,” Chetri told nepalnews.

While exiled refugee groups in Nepal are badly splintered, Bhutanese government agents are known to have infiltrated the camps in Nepal as the host government attempts to repatriate refugees home for more than a decade; the refugees are of Nepali ethnicity in a Buddhist state.