Government will start new campaign to end domestic violence, vows Home Minister

Chitwan – Minister for Home Affairs Ram Bahadur Thapa has said a new campaign would be started at the joint initiation of the government and the people to end domestic violence. 

Speaking in a news conference organized by Press Centre Nepal and the Press Chautari Nepal Chitwan chapters here today, the Home Minister stated that a campaign would be started at the people’s level for checking crime. 

He said that there are more than 36 thousand schools and seven thousand ward offices throughout the country and hundreds of thousands of youths from schools and the ward offices would be mobilized in the campaign to check domestic violence. 

Stating alcoholism and drug abuse were the main reasons behind the domestic violence, the Home Minister stressed on regulating, monitoring and controlling alcohol and banishing narcotics for reducing the domestic violence. 
“We will launch the campaign against crime and domestic violence as a movement,” he reiterated. 

The Minister for Home Affairs claimed that significant works have been initiated under the ‘Prosperous Nepal, Happy Nepali’ campaign after the formation of the incumbent government. He added that incidents of extortion and IED explosions have decreased compared to the situation before the formation of the present government. 

“Incidents related to monopoly and corrupt practices have reduced. The goons are mostly underground. There has been a qualitative increase in revenue as a result of checking on smuggling,” the Home Minister elaborated. 

He said the Nirmala Panta case has been unnecessarily politicized although the Home Administration has been conducting deeper investigation into the case. “The incident has been politicized in various ways,” he added.

 
Stating a high-level investigation team had been dispatched to the incident site the very next day of Panta’s killing, Home Minister Thapa insisted that the Ministry of Home Affairs was moving ahead seriously to book the culprits of this incident. 
He also vowed to forward the process for action against the guilty based on the report submitted by the investigation team and to carry out the investigation into the case. 

Stating that many women like Nirmala Panta have become the victims of rape before and the police has been successful in arresting 95 per cent of the criminals, he said the smuggling of 4,000 kilogrammes gold has been discovered in course of investigating the 33 kilogrammes gold smuggling incident. The gold smugglers’ racket has been dismantled, he claimed. 

The Home Minister insisted that the investigations would not be stopped unless the ‘big and small fish’ involved in gold smuggling were brought to book. (Photo available) 
---