The waning faith of the public in Nepal's courtrooms and (in)justice delivered should invoke a debate in the legislature about what the fundamental philosophy of our legal system should be. When foreigners ask us what legal system Nepal follows, we lawyers stumble a little and repeat what we were all taught in law school: ‘It is mixed with influences from the common legal system, civil legal system and Hindu legal system.’ Since Nepal was never colonised we have not fully embraced either the civil legal system from continental Europe, nor common law from Britain. Until 1990, the legal process resonated more with civil law traditions, then switching abruptly to common law practices. There has not been much legislative discourse on why we had that change of heart.&nbsp; Take a <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/i-speak-nothing-but-the-truth-your-honour">criminal trial</a> as example. The basic premise of the adversarial format is that judges sits as neutral umpires in trials. They use the arguments, facts and evidence produced by defense lawyers (representing the suspects) and prosecutors (representing the victim) to reach a decision and ruling. Compare this to a judge in a civil law/inquisitorial tradition. The judge is an active member of the trial process who participates in fact-finding public inquiry by questioning defence lawyers, prosecutors, and witnesses. They can even order certain pieces of evidence to be examined if they find the presentation by the defense or prosecution to be inadequate. In Nepali criminal cases, the judge is neutral so the police and prosecutors are charged with gathering evidence. The law states that the prosecutor should supervise the police as they investigate a case to ensure the police use only legal methods to obtain information. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/guest-editorial/false-equivalence-in-nepal-academia">False equivalence in Nepal academia</a>, Aastha Dahal However, in reality the police and prosecutors are too busy to coordinate with one another. They also tend to dislike each other. In most cases police investigation reports are copied in whole by the prosecutor who adds a few short paragraphs at the end. And that constitutes the charge sheet: the legal document which sets out which crimes a suspect has committed and should be punished for.&nbsp; When Nepal’s legal system was more inquisitorial before 1992, our trial procedure was governed by the 1961 Government Cases Act (Sarkari Mudda Sambandhi Ain 2017). Prosecutors who served under this law speak fondly about their partnership with the police.&nbsp; I have spoken to prosecutors who recall walking together with the police for hours and days across the rural mountains to examine crime scenes. Together they would examine bodies and draw up reports. They never forgot the smell of death. This practice was abruptly brought to a halt when the Government Cases Act 1992 (Sarkari Mudha Sambandhi Ain 2049) repealed the 1961 law. The new law was predicated on adversarial practice. The police did the investigation in the field, prosecutors now sat in their offices and gave directives to the investigation team. The shift in power dynamics did not sit well with the police. The relationship between police and prosecutors became frosty and disrespectful as they undermined each other.&nbsp; Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/comparing-maina-sunwar-and-resham-chaudhary-cases">Comparing Maina Sunuwar and Resham Chaudhary cases</a>, Aastha Dahal What this means for a criminal case is that evidence is not verified for its thoroughness during investigation. The disintegration of the process continues into the courts. One of the primary methods of obtaining evidence in a criminal case within courtrooms is through the accounts given by witnesses of the crime. According to Nepali law witness answers must be verified by the opposing lawyers through cross-examination, and through the presiding judge.&nbsp; Alas, procedure is often completely subverted. The law expressly states that all witnesses who testify in court must be examined in front of a judge. The part that judges 'must preside' over these proceedings was written in the 2017 Muluki Criminal Procedure Code. This provision sought to rectify the longstanding practice in Nepali criminal trials whereby the judge is mostly absent from witness examinations unless the case involves the rich and powerful.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20240305080344_fed47d470d051e9a554648b1b8a1dd4ed36b39ca2a2e619cb4f71137062619ec.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20240305080344_fed47d470d051e9a554648b1b8a1dd4ed36b39ca2a2e619cb4f71137062619ec" data-rendition-name="original" width="800" height="874" loading="lazy" alt="Nepali legal system"> <figcaption>Illustration: Bhanu Bhattarai/Nepali Times Archive</figcaption> </figure>  In practice, witness examinations are conducted by the administrative staff of the court. We are not taught how to conduct witness exams in law school or any legal professional training. So witness examination which tends to be critical to a criminal trial is just a formality. It feels particularly so when the court administrator snipes at us to finish questioning quickly, prevents us from introducing all witnesses we listed, and summarises what our witnesses say in their own often truncated language as opposed to verbatim. The judges have the power to question and verify statements but this is impossible when they are altogether absent from the proceedings. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/right-to-marry-in-nepal">Right to marry in Nepal</a>, Aastha Dahal In our 'mixed' legal system I've understood judges to have a varied perspective on their roles in the criminal trial. Many perceive themselves as neutral umpires envisioned in the common law adversarial system. Yet, some of their conduct says otherwise. For example, every day after 2PM in the District Courts, suspects arrested by the police are brought before a judge. The purpose of this meeting is to get permission from the judge to keep the suspect in detention as their case is being investigated.&nbsp; Nepal's Constitution mandates that these suspects should have their lawyers accompanying them. The judge has a role to ensure this. However, in most of these proceedings no lawyers are present. The judge curiously asks the suspect whether they committed the crime, how many kilos of drugs they carried. Action unpermitted by the adversarial common law philosophy of practice. &nbsp; If the leaning is towards the inquisitorial system and we argue that judges can be proactive then we do not have a system built for this either. Judges get cases they are to hear about an hour before the proceedings begin. They do not preside over evidence taking events such as witness examinations so they are realistically unable to control any part of the investigation or evidence gathering. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/not-just-16-days-against-gender-based-violence">Not just 16 days against gender-based violence</a>, Aastha Dahal In this context, the legislator's role has to start from drawing out the philosophical basis of our legal system. Lawmakers needs to seriously consider whether it suffices to leave investigations to the police alone, or we need all parties like the prosecutors and judges taking on active roles in the investigative and trial processes. The fundamental consideration should be based on a practice that will increase the likelihood of getting to the truth and contribute to restoring public faith in our judiciary.&nbsp; The legislature of course need not be confined by influences of one colonial legal system or another. Like the International Criminal Court, it can draw lessons from major legal systems across the world, combine it with local experience to formulate a legal system and trial practice uniquely suited to Nepal.&nbsp; Aristotle said ‘the whole is greater than its sub parts’. Likewise, the opportunity to bring technology, critical thought and best practice to reform trials in Nepal is urgently needed.

Aastha Dahal

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Trials and tribulations

The <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/editorial/losing-our-moral-compass">Bhutanese refugee scam</a> passed the first phase of the trial in court vis-a-vis the bail hearing. All suspects pleaded not guilty to varying charges of cheating, organised crime, forgery and treason.
Sixteen suspects including former Deputy Prime Minister Top Bahadur Rayamajhi and his son Sandeep Rayamajhi, former Home Minister Balkrishna Khand, Ministry of Home Affairs Secretary Tek Narayan Pande, former security adviser to the Home Minister Indrajeet Rai and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/the-tragedy-of-tek-nath-rizal-2g4dahmr">Bhutanese refugee leader Teknath Rizal</a> took the stand at the Kathmandu District Court. They explained how they are not involved in this crime. Rizal stunned the court with his final accusation that Khand, Rayamajhi and Pande were criminals.
No one was cross-examined.&nbsp;
Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/news/rot-at-the-top">Rot at the top</a>, Shristi Karki
Cross-examination is a process of questioning a suspect or witness when they speak in court. The opposing lawyer cross-questions the person on the stand to test the tenacity of their account by exposing weaknesses in their statement. Lawyers might also verify certain facts through it.
Professor John H Wignmore, considered an authority on evidence law, famously wrote that cross-examination is ‘the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth’ as it forces people to answer questions they may not wish to. At the hands of skilled trial lawyers, it can expose lies methodically. Remember how American actress Amber Heard’s story unravelled once Johnny Depp’s lawyer cross-examined her.&nbsp;
In the Nepali trial, suspects almost always testify at the court. The Constitution grants them a right to silence but there is no need for most to exercise this right as they are not subject to any cross-examination.&nbsp;
Laws on criminal procedure state that the suspect should be questioned by the court. The legislature has not stipulated whether the authority to question lies with the presiding judge or with another court staff. Principles of fair trial would dictate that as suspects give evidence it should be done in front of a judge.&nbsp;
In our practice of law, suspects are questioned by the administrative staff of the court. The judge is often absent when suspects record their testimony. Except in cases like the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/news/in-a-federal-kleptocratic-republic-of-nepal">fake Bhutanese refugee case</a> where the rich and powerful are on trial. For this case, Judge Prem Prasad Neupane listened to the testimony of all 16 suspects.
When suspects testify, they answer broad queries put to them by the court. Questioning resonates with how qualitative researchers investigate a participant’s story rather than grilling in a court of law.
One can speculate whether things would be different if the judges asked the questions as they do in many European countries. However, the idea of judges leading the questioning of suspects would be problematic under Nepal’s trial system.
Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/comparing-maina-sunwar-and-resham-chaudhary-cases">Comparing Maina Sunuwar and Resham Chaudhary cases</a>, Astha Dahal
Last year, in a bid to mitigate corruption, cases started being allocated through the lottery to each judge. Each morning around 10:30AM judges are allocated cases they must hear for the day. The case hearings start at around 11AM. Judges have no time to study the case beforehand.
This is a contrast to trials in European countries where judges are actively involved in investigation and truth-seeking. Without serious study of the case, Nepali judges cannot realistically engage in a line of questioning that would help discern the truth from lies. Court administrators who tend to question the suspects are not trained in trial practice or interviewing.
Moreover, what makes the Nepali criminal trial further problematic is the fact that only the suspect evades cross-examination. If a victim of a crime or a witness is put on the stand they are cross-examined.
Nepali evidence law is clear. Only answers that are obtained through cross-examination can be admitted as evidence in a trial. There is no exemption for the suspect in the Evidence Act (1974). However, the Criminal Procedure Code (2017) signals an inconsistency with the Evidence Act by stipulating that the court, as opposed to lawyers, should question the suspect. Suspects’ answers untouched by cross-examination are then admitted as evidence.
There is an argument put forth by some lawyers and judges that the function of the suspect’s testimony in court is to verify what they said when interviewed by the police. As part of police investigations, suspects are interviewed by the police as soon as they are arrested. Laws of criminal procedure stipulate that suspects need to be interviewed by the police in the presence of the prosecutor. It is only after the police investigation is completed that suspects are formally charged for their crimes by prosecutors and presented to testify in court.
The idea is lofty yet far from practice. Suspects in most cases tend to confess to the police. In court they completely change their story, state that the police used coercion to force them to confess and plead innocence.
For example, in the hit-and-run case of Prithvi Bahadur Malla, in the police interview, Malla confessed that as a result of partying and sleep deprivation he briefly dosed off while driving and ended up hitting the pedestrian. At court he stated that the steering wheel of his car locked and the vehicle swung into the wrong lane hitting the pedestrian. Judge Surya Prasad Adhikari admitted his testimony to the court (as opposed to the police) as evidence. When stories change so dramatically there is nothing a suspect will verify off of their own accord.&nbsp;
Prosecutors have the burden to build the case and prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. They are busy people with an immensely high workload. Overseeing police interviewing at the arrest phase to have it thrown out by judges when the suspects change their story in court is a waste of their time.
If the idea is to refrain police from torturing people into confessing by having prosecutors present in interviewing, then we might consider videotaping police interviews. This way judges can verify any reports of torture. After all, there are accounts of prosecutors who have turned a blind eye to police torture.
Police interviews and cross-examination by lawyers require the use of different skills and techniques. Lawyers should be allowed to build cases inside courtrooms. If suspects wish to speak their truth they deserve the audience of a judge.
At the same time, the victim of a crime deserves to have the suspect’s account tested and verified by cross-questioning instead of being treated akin to an account of truth.
Aastha Dahal is a Kathmandu-based lawyer with a PhD in criminology from the University of Cambridge.

"I Speak Nothing but the Truth, Your Honour"

Home Minister Sudan Gurung resigned on Wednesday following increasing coverage of and criticism over his investment in companies linked to controversial Nepali business figures Sulav Agrawal and Deepak Bhatta, who are currently under investigation for money laundering.
‘I am resigning from the position of Home Minister effective today to ensure impartial investigation into matters associated with me, and to make sure that there is no conflict of interest,’ Gurung wrote, saying that morality and public trust mattered more to him than office.
Gurung ended his message to the nation in English as he invoked the security forces, writing: &nbsp;‘For my country and For the respect of our security forces and For the youths of Nepal.’
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Gurung has become the second member to depart the Cabinet, serving for less than a month, despite the Nepali electorate’s hopes that Nepal would finally get a stable government after the RSP’s sweeping victory in the March elections.&nbsp;
Prime Minister Balendra Shah had sought clarification from Gurung on Wednesday after new details emerged about his shares in two micro-insurance companies, Star Micro Insurance and Liberty Micro Life, which are said to have been issued their licence by the Nepal Insurance Authority at the behest of Bhatta and Agrawal.
Gurung denied financial misconduct, saying that his investment in the two companies was included in his asset disclosure and insisting the misunderstanding is because of how the shares have been categorised.&nbsp;
Leaders within the RSP had called for an internal investigation into Gurung as they sought to maintain the party’s platform of clean governance and transparency. As such, Gurung’s position had become increasingly untenable, especially since former Labour Minister was sacked without being given an opportunity for clarification over a disciplinary breach involving his wife’s appointment to the Health Insurance Board.&nbsp;
On social media, Sah on Tuesday seemed to express dissatisfaction over the PM’s request for Gurung’s clarification.&nbsp;
Judging by the comments under Gurung’s resignation post, a significant part of the Nepali public seems to be firmly on Gurung’s side, blaming the mass media and what they call mouthpieces of old parties for driving him out of the Cabinet.&nbsp;
This is a reflection of his meteoric rise and the continued support he has maintained since he stepped into the spotlight as the leader of Nepal’s youth movement in the aftermath of the September protest.&nbsp;
Gurung has made headlines constantly ever since he burst onto the national stage, which includes questions over the degree of his and his organisation Hami Nepal’s involvement in the September 9 unrest, calls to divulge details behind Hami Nepal’s finances, and not paying five years of rent for an illegal lakefront property in Pokhara.&nbsp;
There have also been unsubstantiated claims, despite Gurung’s denial, about his ‘ties’ to the Free Tibet movement, which has made the Chinese— as well as Nepalis— wary.&nbsp;
As Home Minister, Gurung cultivated an image of a tough but approachabe leader, overseeing a series of high-profile arrests of previous political leadership and business figures even as he posted photos of sleeping in a sofa in his office, and engaged with the public on the streets and on social media.&nbsp;
As it stands, the Home Ministry was a bone of contention between Shah and RSP Chair Rabi Lamichhane before it was awarded to Gurung, who is a close ally of PM Shah. Analysts had noted that with Gurung in charge, the Home Ministry would be a hook for Shah if Lamichhane, with his share of controversies, stepped out of line.&nbsp;
Following Gurung’s resignation, the Prime Minister’s secretariat has said that the PM would take charge of the portfolio for the time being. But it will be interesting to see if and how fresh negotiations for the Ministry unfold within RSP.&nbsp;
And with his supporter base largely intact, it remains to be seen how much of an impact this setback will have on Sudan Gurung’s political aspirations.&nbsp;

Home Minister Sudan Gurung resigns

Sudan Gurung is dancing. It is 2009. He has an emo fringe falling over one eye and is spinning on a polished floor. His dance shows dedication — moves that take years of bruised elbows to land. The clip is 16 years old, and had been sitting in the dead archives of YouTube and old Facebook pages, watched by almost nobody. This month <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@4gr4j/video/7621892206902725909">it has 1.9 million views</a>. Gurung became Home Minister on 27 March and resigned on Wednesday, barely a month into office. His<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@aayvik/video/7626069452177542408"> pre-political life had been put back into circulation</a> at industrial speed -- the b-boying, the DJ sets, and the YouTube video of him dancing in a music clip.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026042202040_71df4d531423e7c941abde95fb8106346c70ab0afb71bbeb520cc570f14ba178.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="2026042202040_71df4d531423e7c941abde95fb8106346c70ab0afb71bbeb520cc570f14ba178" data-rendition-name="original" width="2300" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="When aura meets audit"> </figure>  The youth of Nepal, well-versed in snappy TikTok edits and aura compilations, turned the archive into a meme economy almost overnight. TikTok remixed the footage to trap beats. The comments settled on a nickname that crossed into everyday speech within days: 'Homie Minister'. <div class="embed-block"><blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@yalexthwreal/video/7622325255792512276" data-video-id="7622325255792512276" style="max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px;" > <section> <a target="_blank" title="@yalexthwreal" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@yalexthwreal?refer=embed">@yalexthwreal</a> <a title="sudangurung" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/sudangurung?refer=embed">#sudangurung</a> new home minister of Nepal😎 <a title="fyppppppppppppppppppppppp" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fyppppppppppppppppppppppp?refer=embed">#fyppppppppppppppppppppppp</a> <a title="sudangrg" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/sudangrg?refer=embed">#sudangrg</a> <a title="home" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/home?refer=embed">#home</a> <a title="minister" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/minister?refer=embed">#minister</a> <a target="_blank" title="♬ original sound - •⪨н є α я т ❤н α ¢ к є я ⪩• - Music Universe 🎧" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-•⪨н-є-α-я-т-❤н-α-¢-к-є-я-⪩•-7308733170064231170?refer=embed">♬ original sound - •⪨н є α я т ❤н α ¢ к є я ⪩• - Music Universe 🎧</a> </section> </blockquote> <script async src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script></div> As Home Minister, Gurung was in charge of the Nepal Police, Armed Police Force, Department of Immigration, and the country's internal security apparatus. Calling him 'homie' collapsed the distance between that office and the Discord server where the movement that brought him into power had organised itself. What is harder to explain is why the nostalgic clips did the narrative work for Gurung's political standing right up until the moment the paperwork did not. A teenager on a dance floor in a Thamel club, filmed before smartphones had decent cameras, was functioning as political currency for a powerful home minister, while a share registry was quietly filling the other column. The footage was not an argument. Gurung was not doing anything in it that related to home affairs. He was just dancing. The comments compared him to <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@4gr4j/video/7621892206902725909">Korean film heroes</a>. A separate <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@tandavyt7/video/7622151050128018708">48,000-like edit</a> was captioned 'Our New Home Minister Aura'. The replies were full of people saying they got chills listening to him speak. Even after his resignation, most comments on his Facebook page were supportive, saying he had been punished for pursuing truth and justice.&nbsp; Political legitimacy in Nepal has been built out of many things over the last 70 years, but it has never been built out of this. The question was always: what happens when the job starts demanding things his style, boldness, and swag cannot provide. Political aura in Nepal used to be a slow harvest, now it isn't. B P Koirala spent eight years in prison under the Panchayat. He wrote fiction at Sundari Jal. The writing survived, the prison sentences survived, and that experience became the template for what a serious Nepali politician looked like: someone the state had tried to break and failed. Legitimacy was accumulated by having their lives taken away, and refusing to bend the knee. The old mechanics of legitimacy produced politicians who could be audited. The record was made of words, dates, votes, and years behind bars. A voter who wanted to know what a leader stood for read his writings. A journalist digging for inconsistency could find it. The system was slow, often corrupt, and frequently boring. But boring was part of the job description. A minister was supposed to be slightly dull — evidence that the person was doing the unglamorous work of reading files and sitting through committee meetings. Today, boring is a disqualification. The attention economy rewards velocity and visual charge, and a politician who cannot generate either does not exist in the feed, and that means does not exist at all. The legacy parties are still issuing press statements criticising the new guard in the grammar of paper trails and procedural failure. But the audience has stopped reading, users scroll for their next viral bite. Sudan Gurung, unlike the old parties, understood exactly which grammar the feed rewarded. On his first evening as Home Minister, he posted a photo of himself sleeping on a sofa inside the ministry. Caption: creation cannot be greater than the creator, government is not above the people. The image travelled further in 12 hours than any ministerial press release has ever done.&nbsp; A minister napping on a sofa, phone-shot, zero production, read by the public as evidence of a minister who had skipped the motorcade and got straight to work. Gurung used Facebook to announce the names of former ministers and businessmen he intended to arrest. The feed was used to pre-announce state security action.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260422010456_2fa1918e1dd031d01f38b4001ee306d9414073cec0b795fa43a75cb5a8deb8c7.png" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20260422010456_2fa1918e1dd031d01f38b4001ee306d9414073cec0b795fa43a75cb5a8deb8c7" data-rendition-name="original" width="926" height="868" loading="lazy" alt="When aura meets audit"> </figure>  INFLUENTIAL INFLUENCER This is not how the Ministry of Home Affairs has ever operated. It is how a YouTuber releases a series. Sudan Gurung was a political content creator. As home minister, he was an influential influencer kinetically doing something in the visual medium. Much like Prime Minister Balendra Shah's sunglasses, Gurung's aura, authenticity and swag were a brand asset, instantly recognisable at thumbnail size. Balen's rap career supplies a pre-political archive that authenticates him the same way Gurung's DJ sets and b-boying clips authenticated him. The aesthetic is doing the work a manifesto used to do. The work is authenticity, and the strategy is auramaxxing. The emo fringe predates the ministry. The DJ sets predate Hami Nepal. The b-boying predates the earthquake, the NGO, the September uprising, the interim cabinet, all of it. Whatever Gurung is now, he was already that person before the office existed. This was the real spectacle of the Homie Minister: authenticity. Nepal's youth have grown up watching heavily-polished, talking-point ministers speak in a language aimed at nobody in particular. But that grainy archival clip of the Home Minister from 2009 was honest.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260422010456_5d6dff3a09e8b7e77dc60c3aa567c9e02b6bd5f90f94e20737ec05cc9a09023b.jpg" data-media-id="editor_7" data-image-id="20260422010456_5d6dff3a09e8b7e77dc60c3aa567c9e02b6bd5f90f94e20737ec05cc9a09023b" data-rendition-name="original" width="1800" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="When aura meets audit NT"> </figure>  The effect transcended GenZ. <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@ektapokharel/video/7623242573481561365">A TikTok trend</a> captioned NOT ONLY OUR HOME MINISTER, WE ARE ALSO FROM THAT ERA <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@sonykhadka/video/7624106790266948872">has millennials posting their own</a> archive photos from the same period, aligning themselves with Gurung's pre-political aesthetic. The aura did <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@_thakuri/video/7623397397556645141">cross-generational work</a>. It was a shared legibility, spanning at least 15 years of Nepali youth culture, with the Home Minister standing at its centre.&nbsp; The traditional politician's entire adult life is a performance of identity. Every photograph is lit for the media, every statement is vetted. The persona is the product, and the product has been in development for 30 years. This makes the old guard legible but suspect in the attention economy. A generation raised on authenticity-as-currency reads the decades of careful performance as evidence of something to hide. The polish is the problem. The nostalgic Sudan Gurung party clips inverted this. The polish was absent. The footage could not be performance aimed at the viewer, because the viewer did not exist in 2009 and neither did the political stakes. The clip was therefore read as real, in a way a press conference can never be. It was just a kid dancing, and he happened to grow up to be the Home Minister. But Sudan Gurung's job was never to go viral. The Ministry of Home Affairs requires the person running it to file a complete asset declaration and to avoid holding financial interests in crony entities.&nbsp; None of that work is content. A correctly filed asset declaration does not get remixed into a trap beat. A functioning immigration database is not a TikTok. The paperwork that constitutes actual governance is structurally boring in exactly the way the old parties are structurally boring, and for the same reason. It is the slow, procedural, checkable apparatus that the old system was built to produce and that the new system has not yet learned to replace. And it is painstaking follow-the-money paper trail investigative journalists in the legacy media who uncovered the evidence. You cannot auramaxx your way out of a share registry. You cannot post your way past a conflict-of-interest statute. No amount of fire outfits and wild DJ transitions does anything for you when a journalist pulls the initial shareholder list of Star Micro Insurance and finds your name at number 49, with Rs2.5 million in shares alongside investors linked to Deepak Bhatta and Sulav Agrawal — two men currently at the centre of a Rs 3.7 billion money laundering investigation. <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@blox.drop/video/7622173520981658900">Auramaxxing was engineered</a> for the mechanics of reaching office. It is the reason Sudan Gurung became Home Minister and Gagan Thapa did not. The question that had not yet been tested, until this week, was whether the same weapon works when the terrain changes. The terrain does change when you assume power. This week, the answer arrived. TWO CLOCKS Two clocks had been running, and they did not sync. The first clock was built for auramaxxing. A clip posted at eight in the morning peaked by noon. A sofa photo was remixed before the minister had left the building. The feedback loop is fast and legible, and a politician playing this clock gets real-time data on what to post next. The old guard never learned to read it, which is a large part of why they lost the election. The second clock was the one the ministry actually runs on. It measures in quarters, court calendars, and the slow grind of investigation files moving between offices. A share registry takes weeks to pull. A money-laundering case moves at the speed of the prosecutor's office, which is to say, it often does not appear to move at all, until one morning it does. The legacy mass media is fed leaks, and the second clock does not care whether the minister is currently trending. The two clocks collided this week, and the second clock got there first. Faster than anyone expected. The first clock put Gurung in the Home Ministry in weeks. The second clock put him out of it in less than a month. On Sunday evening, Diyopost and Janaastha published documents showing Gurung as a founding shareholder in Star Micro Insurance and Liberty Micro Life — companies licensed by the Nepal Insurance Authority in 2022 following what reporting identified as political lobbying by Bhatta and Agrawal. A photograph also surfaced of Hami Nepal, the NGO Gurung chairs, honouring Bhatta as a donor on 21 December 2021. Gurung's first response was auramaxxed. A Monday Facebook post distinguishing ‘rumours’ from ‘facts’, insisting the shares were disclosed within his broader Rs20 million securities portfolio, promising to cooperate with any investigation. "Allegations and truth are not the same thing," he wrote. "Decisions should be based on evidence, not sentiment." It was a coherent clip, but it did not stop the clock. By Wednesday, Prime Minister Balendra Shah had sought written clarification. Leaders within the RSP itself were calling for his resignation. The opposition Nepali Congress had framed the question as one of democratic transparency.&nbsp; Gurung resigned, posting his decision to Facebook as he did everything else. Ethics, he wrote, hold more weight than any position. There is no power greater than public trust. He ended in English, invoking ‘my country … the respect of our security forces … the youths of Nepal’. Even the exit was content. And this is the asymmetry the office exposed. A politician whose legitimacy is built on fast 30 second videos is structurally exposed to a process that runs slower than the news cycle, because the archive of aesthetic proof was not engineered to answer documentary evidence.&nbsp; It was engineered to displace the demand for documentary evidence in the first place. When that demand returns, as it always does once a politician takes office, the digital archive keeps performing, but the documents keep getting uncovered. And the two tracks do not communicate. The old guard knew this clock because they had no other clock to know. What they lost in charisma they gained in durability: a politician built over 20 years of parliamentary record is harder to dislodge with a single document because they have already survived thousands of documents. The new guard has not been stress-tested against its own paper trail. Sudan Gurung has now been tested, and the test is over, and the template has been written in his exit rather than his survival.&nbsp; A politician can enter office on the strength of a dance clip, and the same class of evidence — share registries, company filings, founding-shareholder lists at number 49 — that would have ended the career of a politician in a previous era of Nepali politics has ended his. The second clock got there. The feed did not save him. Or not entirely. Because the resignation itself is now in the feed. The Facebook post. The 46 brothers and sisters. The epic sign-off. Within hours of stepping down, Gurung had already re-enrolled his exit into the same register that put him in office. The clip of the Home Minister dancing in 2009 is still in circulation. The sofa photo still reads as sincerity. The investigation into the micro-insurance shares will move at the speed of Nepal's prosecutor's office, which is to say, at a speed the feed has long since outrun. The movement that installed Gurung in the name of ending elite capture has had its answer about whether its own hero is subject to the same audit it demanded of everyone else. He walked — or was walked — before the audit ran its course. The resignation was framed as moral choice rather than forced exit, and the framing is already winning. Whether that framing holds is the next test. Auramaxxing, it turns out, is a weapon that works in one direction only: it got him the job, and when the documents arrived, it did not save him. But it may yet save the person. These are not the same thing. If the technique is wounded, it is not yet dead. The next Nepali politician with a pre-political archive and a phone is watching how Gurung exits, not just how he entered. And the answer is: you exit the same way you entered: on Facebook. In your own voice. Before anyone else writes the caption. Whether he comes back is the thing to watch. Whether the technique does is already decided. &nbsp; &nbsp;

When Aura meets Audit

Just three weeks in, Prime Minister Balendra Shah has already shed two ministers, and is having to contend with the economic fallout of the West Asia war plus the global order that it has upended.&nbsp;
The new dispensation in Nepal has aroused interest in New Delhi, Beijing as well as Washington. The ouster of Home Minister Sudan Gurung, whose first act in office was to arrest former prime minister K P Oli, has foreign policy wonks scratching their heads.
The US sent Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Samir Paul Kapur on a special mission to figure out what is happening in Kathmandu. In town at the same time was Cao Jing, Deputy Director General of the Asian Affairs Department of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And Prime Minister Shah is preparing for an official visit to India.
For the Americans, it is mostly about containing China and looking after the welfare of Tibetan refugees, while pushing its own MCC Compact and State Partnership Program (SSP). Beijing is mindful of the post-Dalai Lama era, and does not want instability in Nepal to encourage free-Tibet activities. India lately seems more wary of American activity in what it considers its backyard.
The Chinese appear relieved to see Sudan Gurung go. Only last week, Ambassador Zhang Maoming met Gurung during which he raised the issue of Tibetan and Taiwanese activities in Nepal, seeking firm commitment that Kathmandu would not harbour activities hostile to Beijing.
“Geographically we are close to Tibet and not to the Mainland, so China remains suspicious of us, especially after the TOB and free-Tibet components that emerged from the GenZ protests,” says geopolitical analyst Indra Adhikari.
Kapur, for his part, met RSP Chair Rabi Lamichhane, Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle and Foreign Minister Shishir Khanal. Although investment and infrastructure was on the agenda, the main issue seems to have been about Tibetan refugees. In nearly parallel meetings with ministers, Cao Jing warned Nepal not to be too cosy with the Americans.
For Indian academic and Nepal watcher Sukh Deo Muni, all this harks back to American activity in Nepal during the height of the Cold War. He tweeted: ‘US senior diplomat Paul Kapur's statement in Kathmandu must be understood carefully in New Delhi. He said the US does not want China or any other country to dominate Nepal.’&nbsp;
‘Any other country’ could be a pointed reference to India, and what this means is that Nepal may now have to navigate even more carefully a tri-polar world order reshaped by the West Asia war.&nbsp;
Nepali journalist based in New Delhi Akanshya Shah agrees that the United States may not be seeing Nepal through the Indian lens anymore, while New Delhi does not want heightened US activity in what it considers its sphere of influence. All this is further complicated by recent frostiness in Washington-New Delhi ties.
“New Delhi doesn’t have that familiarity factor it used to with old leadership in Nepal, but it is curious about what the young Balen Shah will do and what kind of relation he will pursue with India,” she adds. “Certain decisions of the Balen government such as ending VIP culture and delivering passport at homes have hugely resonated with the Indian people, he has in some ways become a role model among the youth in India as well.”
India has invited Prime Minister Shah for an official state visit, which will be his first foreign trip as per tradition. Shah graduated in structural engineering from a college in Bengaluru, and knows India well. Shah has injected religious elements into his public exposure as prime minister and this could help project Nepal’s ‘soft power’ in dealing with India.
But he has also been a nationalist on the Limpiyadhura map dispute, and there are other thorny issues like air connectivity, river projects and power exports that need to be ironed out.&nbsp;
Sukh Deo Muni warns that the old Indian diplomatic approach based on religio-cultural stakeholders in Kathmandu may not work anymore. He wrote: ‘India's Modi government must prepare itself well to deal with new Nepalese leadership and their empowered support base, which is self-confident, highly nationalist, aspirant and impatient.’
The RSP’s 22-page National Commitment document said Nepal should abandon its historical ‘buffer state’ identity to serve as a ‘vibrant bridge’ between regional and global powers. Much of this debate is theoretical, and there is much navel-gazing that distracts from regional realpolitik.&nbsp;
“Whether we are a buffer state or a vibrant bridge, in today’s heightened geopolitical scenario we have to have good relations with good neighbours,” explains Akanshya Shah. “What is of paramount importance is that our ties are based on the aspirations of the young generation, so that they are engaged.”
Indra Adhikari goes as far as to say that the concepts of “buffer state” and “vibrant bridge” have both failed and Nepal is neither. “We have had zero roles in mediating or de-escalating the tensions between India and China to call ourselves a buffer state. As a vibrant bridge, we cannot facilitate trade of the two countries. The new government should have researched and consulted more before proposing the same outdated and failed foreign policy concepts.”&nbsp;
What will be much more important for Prime Minister Shah is to continue Nepal’s traditional policy of ‘equidistance’ and convince his interlocutors that it is not an anti-Indian stance.&nbsp;
“At a time when there is increased interest of big powers in Nepal, we need to do a bit of our own homework for the systemic reforms we want,” says Akanshya Shah. “As for India, we first need to clearly define what we want on connectivity, energy and culture. But most importantly, we have to capitalise on the goodwill of India which we haven’t been able to in the past.”
Adds Indra Adhikari: “When it comes to fundamental aspects of foreign policy that ensures and enhances the well being of our citizens, national parties should all have one unified voice that doesn’t change when the government does. Only then the future generations can own it.”

Love thy neighbours (and America)

Prime Minister Balendra Shah sought written clarification from Home Minister Sudan Gurung following news of his investment in two companies linked to controversial Nepali business figures Sulav Agrawal and Deepak Bhatt, who are currently at the centre of a Rs3.7 billion money laundering investigation.
Home Minister Gurung's secretariat said that it has responded to the PM and submitted a written explanation. This comes after Home Minister Sudan Gurung issued a public clarification about the new developments regarding his investments on Monday.&nbsp;
Gurung is listed as a founding shareholder of two micro-insurance companies Star Micro Insurance and Liberty Micro Life, having acquired shares amounting to Rs2.5 million. The two companies are said to have been issued their licence by the Nepal Insurance Authority at the behest of Bhatt and Agrawal. Family members and close aides of both Bhatt and Agrawal have stakes in the two companies.&nbsp;
Bhatt, chairman of Infinity Holdings, is a power broker accused of using his political connections to secure and manipulate public procurement contracts, influence policy changes ass well as leadership appointments to regulatory institutions including the Securities Board of Nepal and Nepal Insurance Authority.&nbsp;
Meanwhile, Shanker Group vice-chair Sulav Agrawal was also arrested earlier this month as part of a broader money laundering probe as well as an investigation into the group’s finances. Agrawal was previously arrested during the Covid-19 pandemic after he was found selling &nbsp;67 infrared thermometers from a vehicle with diplomatic credentials. At the time, Bhatt is said to have used his connections to facilitate Agrawal’s release.&nbsp;
Critics have raised concerns the lack of detailed disclosures on Gurung’s part about investments tied to the very figures that his Home Ministry is in charge of investigating. There are also questions as to the source of his investment, which Gurung said in his clarification were raised through loans.
In his clarification, Gurung denied concealing his investments, saying that his shares in the two companies are part of in his over Rs20 million portfolio included in his asset disclosure and insisting the misunderstanding is because of how the shares have been categorised. &nbsp;
On his name and portfolio being associated with controversial figures, he responded, ‘There are hundreds to thousands of shareholders in a company. Buying shares does not constitute a partnership with anyone.’&nbsp;
He continued: ‘If that is the basis, then everyone with investments in those companies must be held accountable, which is not fair. Investments in the companies include those from media houses and banks. Are they all guilty?’
Leaders within the RSP have called for internal investigation into Sudan Gurung, to maintain the party’s platform of clean governance and transparency.&nbsp;
This comes after the sacking of Labour Minister Dipak Sah earlier this month after the RSP found him to be in breach of the party code of conduct following the reappointment of his wife to the Health insurance board. Sah was not given the opportunity for clarification prior to his departure.&nbsp;
Critics have said that the party is reverting to the patronage-driven politics of previous leadership following the appointment of figures close to RSP leadership in various key positions.
Many influential business owners elected to the House with direct stakes in the business, finance, tourism, and infrastructure sectors sit in Parliamentary Committees that would directly benefit their interests. &nbsp;
On Monday, RSP appointed Bhupdev Shah, who previously was a part of Balen Shah’s secretariat during his tenure as Kathmandu Mayor, as the party’s general secretary. Some have questioned the party’s decision to appoint Shah without going through an election process in its upcoming general convention.&nbsp;
Shah’s appointment comes as there is increased public attention over members of the Prime Minister’s inner circle being appointed to key advisory positions as well as to head governance reform committees.

criminal-trial

Trials and tribulations

"I Speak Nothing but the Truth, Your Honour"

Home Minister Sudan Gurung resigns

When Aura meets Audit

Love thy neighbours (and America)

PM seeks clarification from HM