New Delhi/Kathmandu: Indian border guards killed a Nepali citizen over a local dispute in a rare shooting at the border, Nepal’s government said, prompting anti-India protests in the area and in the national capital on Friday.
India on Friday initiated an inquiry into the matter, an official said.
“The Government of Nepal is being requested through diplomatic channels to share post-mortem and forensic reports to facilitate the process,” Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Gopal Baglay said.
Govinda Gautam, 20, of Punarbas Municipality-8 in Kanchanpur district of Nepal, died on Thursday after he was injured when an SSB inspector from Sampurnanagar station allegedly opened fire.
“Officials of the two bordering districts — Kanchanpur of Nepal and Lakhimpur Kheri of India — have met in the backdrop of the prevailing situation and agreed to maintain peace and order,” he added.
The incident took place in Ananda Bazar along the Nepal-India border.
The Indian Embassy in Kathmandu, however, categorically denied any firing by the SSB personnel.
A dispute erupted in the border area after Nepal-India pillar number 200 went missing and both sides staked claim and counter-claim over the area in no-man’s Land.
The Nepali side was constructing a culvert in an area that is claimed by India. The situation became tense on Thursday after the SSB personnel, who were accompanied by residents of the Indian border town of Basahi, allegedly fired in the air.
Nepali residents said the SSB personnel contended that Indian territory was being transgressed upon in the digging for the culvert.
Dozens of people were protesting over a damaged culvert in Nepal’s Anandabazaar near the border with India on Thursday when Indian border guards opened fire, killing a 25-year-old man, a government statement said.
An Indian foreign ministry spokesman said India’s border guards had opened an inquiry and had asked Nepal to provide a forensic and post mortem report on the victim.
It said officials from the two countries had met and agreed to take steps to maintain calm.
But on Friday, fresh protests erupted in Anandabazaar, which is 477km southwest of Kathmandu, with an even bigger group of Nepalis attacking a local government office, Home Ministry spokesman Bal Krishna Panthi said.
“The area is tense,” a police official in the region said.
Another group of demonstrators tried to march on the Indian embassy in Kathmandu in protest over the shooting, but were stopped by police, leading to scuffles, police official Chhabi Lal said.
Nepal’s ties with India were strained towards the end of 2015 and into last year after it blamed India for tacitly supporting a months-long blockade on fuel and goods by Indian-origin plainspeople who are opposed to Nepal’s constitution.
