-By a Post Reporter
KATHMANDU, April 26 – Thousands of mourners today lined up at the heart of Kathmandu to pay their last tributes to Manmohan Adhikari, the Chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (UML).
Adhikari, the 78-year-old former prime minister, passed away this morning at the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH), a week after he had slipped into a state of coma.
A three-day national mourning has been declared by the government while Tuesday will be a public holiday. Government offices in the country and Nepali missions abroad have been instructed to fly the national flag at half mast during the three-day mourning.
Following Adhikari’s demise, Executive Director of TUTH, Dr. Govind Prasad Sharma, today said his blood pressure had dropped appreciably, which prompted his heart to stop at 2:32 a.m. “About an hour and half before that, the condition had begun to deteriorate,” Adhikari’s son Prakash said.
Adhikari’s body was first taken to the party office at Balkhu for private mourning and then shifted to the Tudikhel open theatre for the public.
Leaders, students, bureaucrats and commoners alike lined up to pay their last tributes all day today. Some prayed, some wailed and others silently mourned the death. Men, women and children withstood the summer heat to get a last glimpse of the former prime minister who will be cremated tomorrow at Aryaghat, Pashupati, on the banks of the Bagmati.
The body will be kept at the Open Theatre until 4 p.m. on Tuesday when it will be moved away for cremation, according to UML central secretariat secretary Pradip Nepal.
UML has also decided to close all its offices for two days and postpone all programmes scheduled for the next three days. A 231-member committee has been formed under the chairmanship of UML General Secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal to make funeral arrangements.
As the residents of Kathmandu woke up to the news of the death on the radio early today, hundreds rushed to TUTH and lined up on both sides of the pathway that led out of the morgue.
Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala on hearing the news reached the hospital at 6:20 a.m. Home Minister Govind Raj Joshi was also with the prime minister.
UML leaders Bharat Mohan Adhikari, Khadga Prasad Oli, Pradip Nepal, Iswor Pokhrel had also reached the hospital early in the morning.
General Secretary Nepal and Local Development Minister Amrit Kumar Bohara too rushed back to Kathmandu from their constituencies as the news of the demise reached them.
Before the body was taken out of the hospital, Adhikari’s eyes were removed and donated as per the wishes of the late leader by doctors from Tilganga Eye Hospital.
Adhikari was rushed to TUTH last Monday after he collapsed after attending a mass gathering at Gothatar on the outskirts of Kathmandu. The meet was one of the series on the campaign trail to the May 3 parliamentary election.
Doctors at the emergency room immediately performed CPR (Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation) to re-start heartbeat. He was put in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) where an artificial ventilator assisted his breathing while he remained in coma.
On Thursday, doctors declared that his brain had “completely stopped functioning” and his kidney had also been fast failing since then. A team of senior Nepali doctors were attending Adhikari while three specialists from the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences were flown in Tuesday.
Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala and the government had assured that no stones would be left unturned in the treatment and if needed specialists from abroad would be brought in or he would be taken abroad for treatment.
The AIIMS doctors are said to have told Nepali doctors that their treatment was fine and that there wasn’t much they could do.