President of the Nepali Congress (NC), Morang district Amrit Aryal

President of the Nepali Congress (NC), Morang district Amrit Aryal
(Photo source : Kantipur daily)

Police opened fired at president of the Nepali Congress (NC), Morang district Amrit Aryal and NC Biratnagar municipality committee president Kamaksha Parajuli NC in Biratnagar on Saturday.

The duo, traveling on a motorbike after participating in a pro-democracy rally, was targeted by policemen who were following in a white van, reports said.

Police had tried since morning to arrest them and they shot at them after a chase of some 100 meters from Gudari Chowk.

According to Aryal, the police van also tried to crush their motorbike once.

After the incident, Superintendent of Police (SP) Jagat Bahadur Bista telephoned Aryal and apologized. “The incident occurred ‘by mistake’, so please don’t publicize it,” Aryal quoted Bista as saying.

Meanwhile, condemning the incident, NC and CPN-UML demanded that the guilty be punished within 24 hours, and threatened “unprecedented protests” if the authorities failed to do so.

Meanwhile a report from Rajbiraj said that security personnel mistreated journalist Jitendra Khadga, who is also the chairman of Youth Journalists Society, Saptari, after holding him for two hours, on Saturday.

“They scolded me as I was getting down from a public bus for avoiding possible danger after some armed security men got onto it and they asked me why I got down” report quoted Khadga as saying.