Nepal minister forced to quit over security fracas

KATHMANDU - After a series of attacks on high profile people, including the murder of a media magnate and an attempt on Indian managing director of a medical college, Nepal’s Minister of State for Home Affairs Rizvan Ansari Wednesday quit his post.

Ansari’s resignation is thought to have been prompted by internal quarrels in his own party, the ruling Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML).

The minister had been gunning for his senior, Home Minister Bhim Rawal, saying the latter should resign taking moral responsibility for the deteriorating law and order situation.

But the influential home minister has refused to step down, despite the clamour for his resignation in his own UML party.

Finally, Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal is reported to have pressured Ansari to resign in a bid to pacify Rawal.

Ansari is the second minister to quit after Nepal recently sacked sports and education minister Ram Chandra Kushawa after a raging scandal about selling jobs to teachers.

The resignation comes at a time the coalition government faces growing charges of having failed to restore law and order.

Last month, gunmen fired at Jamim Shah, a cable television network owner with alleged links to Karachi-based underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, in one of the busiest streets of the capital but police failed to arrest the attackers.

This month, a Marwari publisher and businessman Arun Singhania was shot dead in southern Nepal while Nagender Pampaty, the Indian managing director of a medical college in southern Nepal, escaped an attempt on his life in the capital.

Subsequent investigations have revealed close links between the criminal and Nepal’s police force.