A Tale of Two Deaths

“My brother died right in front of my eyes”

- Dhanu Bishwakarma

Sujani Magiya was busy preparing for a family gathering that fateful Friday at her home in Chandragiri as her husband, television journalist Suresh Rajak, got ready to head to work. 

Sujani reminded him to be home early for the get-together. “I’ll come back early,” Suresh promised and left to cover the royalist rally at Tinkune. 

As confrontation between riot police and demonstrators unfolded, he had climbed up an office building for a vantage point to film the events below. Just then, some in the crowd shouted that there were police on the roof of the building and started stoning the green glass façade. 

Suresh was last photographed filming through the broken windows, and kept on filming even as the rioters set fire to the building after blocking the front door. Suresh was either asphyxiated or was burned to death. His body was discovered hours later.

Back in Kirtipur, Sujani was too busy preparing dinner for the family gathering to check her phone, and was unaware of what was happening across town. 

When she finally saw the news, she dialled her husband’s number but his phone was switched off. The rest of the family had already heard that Suresh was dead, but did not have the heart to break the news to his wife.

“My brother-in-law told me around 6PM that my husband had met with an accident and had been taken to hospital,” Sujani recalled. “They stopped me from going to the hospital.” 

She feared the worst, and prayed fervently. It was on Saturday evening that she finally got confirmation that her husband had lost his life. Her tears have not stopped since. “I have lost everything,” she told us, weeping.

Suresh was the youngest of four siblings, and the family could not afford to send him to college. The eldest brother Ramesh took care of the brothers, but his police job did not pay enough. 

Suresh migrated to Malaysia to work for two years to supplement the family income. He came back after his mother died, and his other brother Dinesh, who is a video journalist with Lokpath, suggested that he also get a job as a reporter. He had been a video journalist at Avenues TV for the past seven years.

Dinesh and Suresh left home together on 28 March to cover the pro- and anti- monarchy rallies and had agreed to be home early for dinner. Dinesh reached Tinkune as the royalists were gathering, but was too busy to look for his brother. 

At around 4PM, when he was filming the building that had been set alight, a colleague informed that there was a reporter trapped inside. Dinesh immediately dialled his brother’s phone, but could not reach him. 

Dinesh stood frozen as the rioters swirled and shouted around him, unable to get ahold of his brother. No one, including Suresh’s film crew knew where he was. He called hospitals with no avail, and that was when Dinesh felt the journalist in the burning building could be his brother.

“I had been filming the very house that my brother was burned to death in,” he said, weeping. “I will never be able to forget that.”

Dinesh has not been able to face his sister-in-law because he has no answers to the questions she might have. Suresh and Sujani had got married seven years ago after a long-term relationship. She had been with him through much of his journalism career, and was increasingly frustrated that he was often required to work overtime. Suresh dismissed her worries.

He had been injured once before while filming anti-MCC protests in Baneswor three years ago. “I had asked him to quit his job back then, but he would not listen,” Sujani recalls.

Dinesh says that his brother would often take risks to take exclusive photos and videos. He was well regarded by colleagues for his passion for reporting, and was the 2022 recipient of the Hem-Sunil Risky Journalism award.

His body is still at Teaching Hospital, and his family met the prime minister on Monday and demanded that he be eligible for a martyr’s compensation, and to punish those who set fire to the building.

The Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) has organised memorials nationwide for Suresh and condemned the various attacks on Nepal’s media and press institutions during Friday’s protests.

Dinesh says that while the rioters were guilty of setting fire to the building, he faulted the police for not helping rescue his brother even when repeatedly told that there was a reporter inside. He says, “Had they gone to that building, my brother’s life could have been saved.”

The last time Sabin left home

- Anita Bhetwal

There may have been a few thousand pro-monarchist demonstrators at Tinkune on 28 March. But many of those caught up in the melee were either bystanders, or walking past to get to their destinations because there was no public transport.

There are at least a dozen people in hospitals across Kathmandu being treated for bullet wounds who were not protesters, but were hit when the police resorted to live rounds to disperse the angry crowds on an arson rampage.

One of them was Sabin Maharjan, 29, from Kirtipur who drove a public van on the Hetauda-Kathmandu route. He left home that morning telling his wife Bhavisha Thakuri Malla that he was going to pick up his vehicle from a garage. 

Sabin was passionate about driving, and had learnt to drive at the age of 14. He met Bhavisha in Hetauda and got married in 2016. He would often stay nights in Hetauda unless his vehicle needed repairs, in which case he drove back to Kathmandu.

Last Wednesday, Sabin had come back to Kathmandu in the evening after spending a week in Hetauda, leaving his Tata Sumo at a garage in Balkhu for repairs before heading home to Kirtipur. 

Relatives and co-workers say they have no idea why a man who had said he was going to pick up his van from the garage had ended up across town at a violent protest.

“Maybe someone took him to Tinkune from the garage, or he could have gone there for some other work,” Bhavisha says, her voice breaking. 

Bhavisha was doing her chores with her daughter when she got a call from TU Teaching Hospital. She rushed to Maharajganj, but was informed that Sabin had died. 

Bhavisha stares listlessly at her daughter Subisa beside her, as mourners file into the room to offer words of consolation. “The bullet wound was on the left side of his chest, he must have died instantly, without knowing what hit him,” she says. “Those here ask what they can do for me. Can they bring my husband back?”

Relatives say Sabin had no interest in politics, and had never joined any political rally. The only time he left home was to drive his van.

Bikash Maharjan raised his nephew, Sabin, since he was five after his mother’s death and father’s remarriage. He says: “Sabin was not the least bit interested in politics. We just cannot understand what took him to Tinkune.”

Family and neighbours were not the only ones at Sabin’s house in Kirtipur to offer condolences. There were some participants from the pro-monarchy protests, as well as government representatives. 

But Bhavisha has no interest in meeting them. “I do not know what this protest was for. All I know is that if it had been peaceful, this would never have happened.”

Bikash Maharjan, Sabin's uncle, says his death should not be exploited by any political side for propaganda purposes. “We are ordinary people, we do not want anyone to use the name of the son we have lost for any political purpose.” 

“Since Sabin cannot take care of his family now, it is up to the government to support them,” he adds.