Kamal Thapa, the home minister in king Gyanendra’s ancien regime, was released on Wednesday following a Supreme Court order. A two-member bench of the Supreme Court ruled that Thapa’s arrest on January 15 under the Maintenance of Peace and Public Security Act was without substantial ground. Thapa was charged with instigating the agitation in the southern Terai plains.Thapa was first arrested within a month of the G P Koirala government taking over, on the ground that he was a threat to the newly established peace. He was released following a Supreme Court order. The second arrest a month ago came after a parliamentary committee, investigating a shoot-out by an army personnel that occurred when Thapa was the home minister, instructed the police to produce him before the committee. The Supreme Court today turned down the Home Ministry’s plea that the Maintenance of Peace and Public Security Act empowered the government to make preventive arrests such as Thapa’s. The verdict, which the government implemented three hours later, comes at a time when votaries of judicial independence are saying the interim constitution that came into force on January 15, the day Thapa was arrested, effectively subsumes the higher judiciary to executive authority.
