Ex-Nepali minister, driver shot dead

KATHMANDU, June 30: In what is suspected to be a cross-border fallout of Mumbai gangland wars, a former Nepali minister was shot dead last n...

KATHMANDU, June 30: In what is suspected to be a cross-border fallout of Mumbai gangland wars, a former Nepali minister was shot dead last night in a north Kathmandu locality.

Former minister of state and Rashtriya Prajatantra Party member of the Partinidhi Sabha — the lower House of the Nepali Bicameral Parliament — Mirza Dilshad Beg was shot dead as he was walking to the residence of his second wife in the Siphal locality of the Nepali capital at 9.30 pm yesterday. Police said Mirza tried to run for his life as his unknown assailants opened fire but fell to at least six to seven bullets in his back from small arms fire. The assailants also shot dead Mirza’s driver Bhuvan Karki in his driving seat even as he was parking the vehicle at a slight distance away from Mirza’s second wife’s residence.

Mirza Dilshad Beg, who had claimed that he could “never lose any Parliamentary election in Nepal”, was successively elected twice from the Kaplivastu constituency in western Nepal. The undisputed leader inthe area, lying on the Indo-Nepal border, Mirza was believed to be deeply involved in unlawful and illegal activities both within Nepal and in India.

Deemed as the man in Nepal of former Mumbai ganglord and now Dubai resident Dawood Ibrahim, Mirza was suspected to be involved in virtually every sphere of activity conducted by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency in the Hindu Himalayan kingdom aimed against India. An Indian by birth, Mirza hailed from Deoria district in eastern Uttar Pradesh. Meanwhile, Nepal’s main Opposition party leaders on Monday threatened to withdraw their support to the ruling minority government because it had failed to fulfill its promises. The main Opposition, Nepal Communist Party-United Marxist and Leninist (NCP-UML) chairman Manmohan Adhikari and general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal said that the government led by the Nepali Congress (NC) had failed to deal with any of a number of problems since coming to power.