I met Dipendra in the palace when he was three years old. King Birendra and Queen Aiswarya were busy with state affairs most of the time. Dipendra was brought up by nannies and orderlies, and was deprived of parental love. He wasn't allowed to mingle much with other children, nor was he put under the care of experts to groom him to be crown prince. He did not even get an opportunity to develop a normal personality, and used to beat people to the ground and until they cried. He used to enjoy doing it, and was growing eccentric and stubborn.

I couldn't help notice what was happening to him. Although mother-son relations should be warm, Dipendra was not in good terms with the queen as both were headstrong. Neither would concede defeat. I experienced and closely studied his personality, I witnessed and experienced his sadistic activities. We had to escort him to school when he was in kindergarten. He did not want to go to school, but the queen forced him to. She used to shout at him and slap him often when he refused. Sometimes, he wanted to get off the car that was taking him to school.

Dipendra was a lot of bother to his ADCs. He had a destructive streak and used to break glasses and pens in the ADC's office, and if an ADC refused to obey him he used to kick and slap them. I had been at the receiving end of such treatment often. He had named me "Dangerous ADC". He was a spoilt brat.

The reason he was sent off to boarding school at Budhanilkantha was that he was difficult to handle at home. Actually, he enjoyed the freedom he had as a crown prince in school. He started drinking and smoking when he was in Grade Seven. We also heard that he led a gang to Siddhartha Bansathali School for a fight. He was interested in body-building, boxing and karate.

The distance between Dipendra and his parents widened after he started going to school. The parents cut his allowance but he would borrow from others. Since childhood, he got pleasure from hurting others, he used to hunt pigeons with his catapult, and he would torture the wounded bird before it died. If he caught a mouse, he would set its tail on fire and leave it to die.

He had a thoughtful side, too. He loved travelling, wrote poetry, and Nepali literature teachers were hired to hone his talent. In Grade Six, he came up to me and said, "My mother is always ordering me around, can you have a word with her?" I couldn't help him.

As he grew older, he fell for Supriya Shah. The queen came to know about it. She may have asked him about it, which he did not like. The queen was against this relationship because of family ties: Supriya was grand-daughter of Queen Mother Ratna's own sister. I overheard the queen once saying, "Supriya is not competent to be queen."

Queen Ratna didn't mind the relationship, and King Birendra found himself in the middle between Ratna and Aiswarya. Dipendra met Devyani when he was studying at Eton. He continued his relationship with Supriya while he courted Devyani. But the royal family had a position that the crown price should not marry someone having relatives in India, as Devyani did.

He once had a torrid affair with a Japanese girl he met at Eton, and she had come to Nepal often to meet him. On one of those visits they had a huge fight. Dipendra's ADC Gajendra Bohora escorted her to the airport. On the way, the girl told him: "Your crown prince is mad, he will die a dog's death." 

I had no time to grieve

VIVEK KUMAR SHAH

It was completely unimaginable. It was a huge shock, when I first heard what had happened that night, my nerves went numb. I rushed to the military hospital in Chhauni where I saw the grotesquely mutilated bodies of the members of the royal family. I cannot describe it in words. As ADC, I had to overcome my emotions, there was no time to grieve, I had to focus on the task at hand. I called the secretaries, the prime minister whom I briefed on what was going on.


I worked with the investigation team. I told them, I tell you now: Crown Prince Dipendra did it. But the conspiracy theories won't go away. Who and why was the crown prince provoked to carry out such an act? 

The report mentioned the crown prince went on the rampage under the influence of drugs and drinks, which is not completely right. We never saw him drunk and fall unconscious. It might be that he was stressed before going ahead with his plan. He was in control, just look at his phone calls and the people he talked to. He pretended he was drunk.

It was true he had an ambition to be king. "If I don't become the king, then nobody does," he had told me once. I took it as a joke. He was getting extremely frustrated with the wait to be king. Never in my wildest imagination did I think this would happen.

Even today, when I remember that night, I break down.

Vivek Kumar Shah was serving as Military Secretary  at the palace during the massacre

Read also:
Flash back, KUNDA DIXIT
Dipendra kicked his father after he shot him, KETAKI CHESTER