Five Indians arrested for obscenity in Nepal

KATHMANDU - Four young Indian women and the owner of a hotel, also an Indian, have been arrested in Nepal for indulging in obscene acts and disturbing the peace.

The five were arrested from a hotel in southern Nepal along the Indo-Nepal border on Christmas eve, Inspector Bhim Bahadur Bogati told IANS.

“We received a tip-off that obscene dances were being held at the Shekhar Hotel in Birgunj,” Bogati said. “When we raided the hotel around 9.30 p.m. Friday, we found four women, skimpily clad, gyrating vulgarly. We arrested them and the owner of the hotel for obscene acts and disturbing the peace.”

Two of the girls are 16 - Nisha Khatun, who is from Uttar Para, West Bengal, and Laxmi Kumari Yadav, from Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh.

The other two are Tupu Mandal, 21, from Hooghly in West Bengal, and Paya Singh, 25, from Naya Basti in Uttar Pradesh.

The owner of the hotel, Guru Prakash Singh, 27, is from Bihar’s Hajipur.

Bogati said as per law, the five can be kept in custody for 25 days. After that, they will have to be produced in court.

While a Nepali national is usually released on bail on being charged with disturbing the peace, the law could be more stringent for foreigners, who are often refused bail due to fears that they would jump bail and flee the country.

Recently, Nepal’s deposed crown prince Paras Bir Bikram Shah was charged with a similar offence by police even though there were allegations first of a more serious offence.

Paras, notorious for his runaway temper and drunken brawls, was also alleged to have fired a gun after pointing it at the head of the man he was brawling with.

However, he was released after 48 hours in custody on a bail of NRS 10,000 when eyewitnesses refused to testify to police that they had seen him carrying or firing a gun.

(Sudeshna Sarkar can be contacted at sudeshna.s@ians.in)