Spotlight shifts back to Dipendra in Nepal massacre

Gruesome details of Nepal's palace massacre emerged yesterday as authorities declared a six-hour overnight curfew in Kathmandu, the third to be imposed in the capital this week as a precautionary measure.

The threat of further unrest however lay close beneath the surface as a number of survivors of Friday night's massacre of the Nepal royal family at Narayan Hitty palace confirmed yesterday that it was then Crown Prince Dipendra who had killed 10 people, including his parents and siblings before turning the gun on himself.

Nir Shah, a well known Nepali film actor and producer-director, whose brother Kumar Khadga Bikram Shah and sister-in-law Sharada, the sister of late King Birendra were both slain on the night of the massacre, told an Indian television network that it was Crown Prince Dipendra who had killed the royal family and the others.

Friends of the royal family said Dipendra was clinically dead when he was brought to hospital late on Friday after shooting himself in the chin. This was corroborated by all 12 survivors of the massacre who in the most complete version of the bloody sequence of events said Dipendra had staggered into the living room of his own home where his family had gathered for dinner, but was ushered away by his cousin and now Crown Prince Paras on the orders of the king who objected to his son's inebriated condition.

The survivors said the prince, a sharp shooter, later returned armed, clad in army gear and wore a blank expression as he shot his father and thenn his uncle Prince Dhirendra and the others in the room. The shooting reportedly lasted 15 minutes.

Suraj Shumsher Rana, maternal uncle of late King Dipendra confirmed the killing was over the choice of Dipendra's bride. Meanwhile, the high-level committee formed by King Gyanendra on Monday to probe the massacre, appeared to falter after the Leader of the Opposition, Madhav Kumar Nepal of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) refused to name a replacement following his pull out.