Montage: Himalayan people

Music

00:00

Foothills of the Himalayas

Hardaker: At the foothills of the Himalayas in the tiny mountain kingdom of Nepal, a tragedy the size of Everest has confounded the gods.

00:16

Nepal’s Royal palace

Despite a profound faith in the power of the deities, evil has found its way into this land. One night of mayhem in Nepal’s Royal palace has shattered ancient beliefs, and left a people reeling and confused.

00:30

Now members of the Royal household speak for the first time to reveal what really happened the night a Crown prince murdered his father, the king – and all but wiped out a dynasty.

00:52

Ketaki

Ketaki: After he made sure the king was dead by pushing his body with his feet, and then he turned around and shot everybody in sight it seemed to me

01:06

Singh

Singh: He says brother “nai dai, nai, dai” which in Nepali he says nai dai, no brother, no brother.

01:17

Nepal’s Royal palace

Hardaker: With a revered King dead. a new king has been crowned, but there’s a crisis of faith in the monarchy.

01:25

Dixit

Dixit: This is about as excruciating as it could get for any country in the world and this little kingdom in the Himalayas really got it between the eyes.

01:35

Royal family funeral procession

Hardaker: The massacre of the Royal family has given new life to a mass movement based on the teachings of Chairman Mao. A people’s war is underway, and it threatens to topple the government of Nepal.

01:51

Band music

Funeral procession

Hardaker: It’s the festival of Gai Jattra and the people of Kathmandu gather to remember their dead. This is a centuries old ritual, started by a king to cheer up his queen, grieving over the death of a son.

02:17

So this year’s festival has a special resonance. Nepali’s have lost their beloved King Birendra, the monarch revered here as an incarnation of the god, Vishnu, the protector.

02:33

Losing the king is catastrophe enough. Losing an entire royal family - at the hand of the Crown prince – who then killed himself – has been cataclysmic.

02:51

Ketaki

Ketaki: We all grew up together we went to school in the same place and they were my family and now there’s hardly a handful of us left, I mean it’s the biggest tragedy I've ever suffered in my life.

03:02

Singh

Singh: I hate to recollect the things that I saw there, it was something terrible. I mean no one should go through such a pain in his life.

03:18

Rana

Rana: Since then I saw what is a man’s life, it is so short, you see.

03:36

Military salute

Hardaker: These witnesses to the massacre all knew the Crown prince, Dipendra, from birth. The heir to throne held senior rank in the Royal Nepal army. It was well known Dipendra had a fascination for guns – but no-one knew how deadly that might become.

Kathmandu at night

On Friday night, June 1, as Kathmandu went about its business, a regular gathering of the royal inner circle was starting at the palace. But tonight was different – after greeting guests the crown prince retired to his room pretending to be drunk. Half an hour later he emerged dressed in combat fatigues and armed to the teeth.

04:08

Ketaki

Princess Ketaki Rajya Laxmidevi Shah is a prominent figure in the Royal family – a cousin and life-long friend of the late King, Birendra. She was the first to see the Crown Prince.

04:35

Ketaki: Just before the incident I was standing in what they call the billiard room where it all took place. I mean I was standing almost in front of the door with my sister, Princess Jayanti, who eventually died in the incident. And I just saw him walk in, in full uniform with boots and gloves, and I thought that he looked a little bit comical, really. And I commented to my sister saying isn’t he getting a bit old for fancy dress?

0449

Mahesh Singh

Mahesh Singh: I heard somebody coming, footsteps. I just out of curiosity looked back, over my shoulder.

05:20

Hardaker: Mahesh Singh was the next to see the Crown Prince. He was talking to King Birendra as the prince approached.

05:31

Singh: I hear bang bang, two shots. They were so close to my right ear, and I thought I'd completely blown my eardrum.

05:40

Hardaker: Rabi Rana was by the King’s side and he looked the prince in the face.

05:49

Rabi Rana

Rabi Rana: Well, I didn’t say anything but I said why? I said by gesture, I said why? He saw my face. He saw my face. It was not angry at all.

Hardaker: The Crown Prince then produced a machine gun.

06:09

Singh

Singh: hen I closed my eyes I hear the automatic fire, the first drrrrrr it went like that. Who was shot I didn’t see. Then I suddenly find his majesty is lurching on the right side, just leaning like this.

06:14

Music

Ketaki

Super:

Princess Ketaki Rajya Laxmidevi Shah

Ketaki: In the quiet after all that I think he finished off the whole magazine and I heard King Birendra say rather quietly in Nepali, what are you doing? And he was, from where I was standing, he was behind a pot plant so I just went forward to see what was happening and I saw, I noticed he had been shot and I saw him start to fall. And that’s when I realised, that I mean, he's been shooting the king, and I was totally dazed, I didn’t know how to react.

06:44

Hardaker: The Crown prince left the billiard room, but returned again, this time armed with a new automatic weapon.

07:20

As Mahesh Singh took cover, the Crown Prince’s cousin, Prince Paras, tried to intervene.

07:30

Singh

Singh: He says brother “nai dai, nai, dai” which in Nepali he says nai dai, no brother, no brother, brother. It was two or three times he said.

07:39

Hardaker: By now the Crown Prince was bent on utter destruction.

Ketaki

Ketaki: Well he shot at the king’s party again and he even went up, I mean I think by then the king was dead because he sort of kicked the body with his feet to make sure he wasn’t moving and then he just swung the gun around and he shot all of us. And as I was lying there, I mean I saw one of my cousins, I mean he deliberately took aim and shot off the back of her head. And then he swung the gun around and I didn’t recognise who it was at the time but there were two cousins, ladies on the ground and he so casually just swung the gun around and shot at them again.

07:51

Funeral procession

Hardaker: In the space of two minutes the Crown prince had killed 10 members of the Royal household. Five others were wounded and taken to hospital. Princess Ketaki saw her sister machine gunned to death. The princess took fire to her shoulder.

08:33

Ketaki

Ketaki: I was lying on the marble floor and I could hear the blood flowing out of my shoulder, and that’s when I looked down at my shoulder and I saw -- well, white stuff which I suppose was bone, and I didn’t look any further, I just wrapped my sari around it and tried to hold it together as best I could and stop the bleeding.

08:52

Rabi Rana

Rabi Rana: It was a bloody, bloody scene, so much blood all over the places.

09:12

Singh

Singh: I know its just so sad, a moment ago we were talking - suddenly they are not there. [cries]

09:21

Funeral procession

Hardaker: As word of the tragedy spread beyond the palace, the nation struggled to comprehend.

09:43

Music

Hardaker: It emerged that the crown prince had fallen for a forbidden love -- Debyani Rana – a commoner with Indian blood. The prince could marry her, but there was a cost – he could never be king. A palace insider confirms this.

09:55

Simha

Simha: He couldn’t marry the girl of his choice, that is the very only reason.

10:11

Hardaker: Major General Bharat Simha, has served the palace for much of his life. He is the honorary aide de camp to the king and once served as the Crown prince’s guardian.

10:20

Simha

Simha: Well I mean you can blame anyone, everyone, you can blame everyone, even blame the king and the queen saying they didn’t let him marry. You can blame the family saying they didn’t stop, but this is hypothetical.

10:30

Music

Funeral procession

Hardaker: With the bodies of the Royal family set alight, with them died any way of knowing exactly what motivated the Crown Prince to not just kill his father, but annihilate his entire family.

10:51

Music

Hardaker: It was the start of the country’s plunge into a dangerous confusion. The palace put the killings down to an accidental firing of a machine gun, an explanation no-one believed. Then there was a hasty inquiry.

11:09

Music

Incident inquiry

Hardaker: It produced the weapons used by the Crown prince – but it failed to examine anyone on oath – now few are prepared to accept the simple truth that the Crown prince pulled the trigger, even those who were there are left wondering.

11:29

Rabi Rana

Rabi Rana: He’s the man, I know very well, I know that he’s the man, but still I don’t believe it. Some doubt comes in my mind.

11:44

Simha

Simha: No human being could have done that. It is the providence, the hand of god.

11:57

Hardaker: Is it possible he just went crazy?

Simha: Could be that, could be that also, because as you know in the report he was smoking something, black something or something, and people tell me that in your part of the world you have some sort of these drugs and if you take it you don’t see people you see tigers and you see leopards and you see lions, so when you see them you are not shooting people you are shooting animals which are going to devour you.

12:05

Town in Nepal

Hardaker: It might seem laughable, but the confusion over who did pull the trigger, and why, is genuine and is having a profound impact.

12:44

Hardaker: In the villages and towns of Nepal, the confusion over the palace massacre is feeding a growing Maoist revolution.

12:58

Long abandoned in China, Mao’s philosophies can still draw a sizeable crowd, here at Kirtipur on the outskirts Kathmandu.

13:04

Dilip: A revolutionary salute to all the freedom fighters of Kirtipur who’ve been involved in the revolution for a long time.

Hardaker: Dilip Maiharjan is one of the leaders of this people’s uprising. He explains the Palace massacre with the party’s official conspiracy theory – a theory implicating Nepal’s former Prime minister, Girija Korala.

13:29

Dilip

Dilip: In order to suppress the strength of the revolution they asked the support of India’s expansionists and America’s imperialists. Girija even asked the palace to support his plans.

Maoist parade

Band music

Hardaker: Under this theory, the late King had refused to mobilise the nation’s army to suppress the Maoists and paid for that with his life.

14:06

Dilip

Dilip: What he ( Girija) did was with the support of foreigners he planned to kill the king and his whole family.

14:16

Music

Nepal countryside

Hardaker: The Maoist line may even be a deliberate distortion, but it’s falling on fertile soil amongst Nepal’s poor and dispossessed.

14:37

Hundreds of thousands of small farmers perform backbreaking work for a pittance each day. For Dilip Maiharjan they are ideal recruits for a peasant revolution.

Dilip

Dilip: From the point of view of freedom in the country the Maoists have taken the policy that as long as there are classes there will be a struggle.

15:02

Hardaker: Dilip and his wife share this house with their three children. He’s already spent 40 days in gaol as a political prisoner, but this humble farmer’s time, apparently, has come. The Royal massacre has changed the political dynamic.

15:18

Dilip: One influence of the palace incident among the people – not only Maoists – is the trust in the palace that was once there has now diminished. The people now put their trust towards the Maoist Party.

15:39

Maoists underground base

Hardaker: Two years ago the Maoists had established a foothold in the west of Nepal, in the poorest districts of the country. At the time, it was a small, underground operation.

16:08

Maoist: We will gradually move into the cities one by one and raise the awareness of the people… and gain their support. Then one day we will take our movement to Kathmandu.

Hardaker: As the Maoists gathered recruits, they also killed and maimed police in random attacks -- casualties then were few.

16:35

Maoist training camp

Hardaker: But two years on the movement has exploded. Just weeks ago, Maoist leaders invited cameras along for a show of their strength.

16:53

They’re well drilled. They’ve got guns – and they don’t mind using them. In this undeclared civil war the Maoists have killed over 400 police–in return police have killed more than 1,000 Maoists.

17:04

Dixit

Super:

Kanak Dixit

Editor, Himal South Asia

Dixit: This was a country where a political death used to bring the country to a halt, it would send shock waves through the country.

17:20

Hardaker: Kanak Dixit is Nepal’s leading political commentator – he’s watched the fast tracking of the Maoist revolution under the leadership of a shadowy figure known only as Comrade Prachanda.

17:33

Dixit: What Mr. Prachanda and his colleagues have decided to do is take a shortcut using the gun and, lo and behold, it has worked thus far in their favour.

17:47

Prime Minister Deuba

Hardaker: And it seems the Maoist leader is elusive even to the man who’s meant to be running the country, Prime Minister Deuba.

18:01

Hardaker: Have you been negotiating, or talking directly with Com Prachanda?

Deuba: No. There’s a reliable link person, between Maoist and me. That's all I can tell you right now.

Maoist rally

Hardaker: The prime minister was thrust into the job two months ago after his predecessor failed to deal effectively with the Maoists. Now the revolution is at the gate. As we interviewed the Prime minister, barely 10 minutes away – in Kathmandu’s central Durbar Square – the Maoists were rallying.

18:36

Hardaker: Their number one demand is an end to Nepal’s constitutional monarchy -- now.

19:03

Deuba

Deuba: I can't force them to change their convictions, but constitutional monarchy will remain here – forever.

Hardaker: If the Maoists though insist?

19:09

Deuba: No. Constitutional monarchy, multiparty democracy. No compromise against constitutional monarchy, no comp against multiparty democracy, they know this fact.

Parliament house, Nepal

Hardaker: Multiparty democracy has only been in Nepal for 10 years, yet in that time there’s been ten different governments and six different prime minsters. As well, corruption has become rampant. So it's little wonder that so many people appear to be drawn to the Maoist alternative.

19:33

Deuba

Deuba: Yes, I must be honest to say that we couldn’t address the problems of the country’s after democracy.

We could not address the problem of poverty, we could not address the problem of social injustice, caste systems, like untouchability. We couldn’t address the problem of unemployment, we couldn’t address the problem of backward ethnic communities, and Maoists came into the picture and are selling the dream.

20:06

Nepali villagers

Hardaker: The prime minister is desperate to buy time. The palace killings have unhinged the national psyche.

20:37

Until the death of the old king, Birendra, the monarchy was the one spiritual thread which bound Nepalis together. But for many, that thread has snapped.

20:49

Gyanendra

The only man who can put it back together again is the new king, Gyanendra, here on a rare public outing to pay homage to his mother. But few are convinced there’s much that’s godly about Gyanendra. Before his coronation he’d used his Royal position to build a thriving business empire.

21:30

Dixit: The present king of Nepal, Gyanendra, has a problem with some amount of credibility with his populace.

21:23

Dixit

Super:

Kanak Dixit

Editor, Himal South Asia

He comes under a cloud onto the throne, because there is a lot of suspicion that he himself might have been involved in it.

Music

Hardaker: The new king, too, is the victim of yet another conspiracy theory -- that he plotted with his son, Prince Paras, to kill the old king and seize power.

Music

Hardaker: Prince Paras is the playboy prince, who’s high living ways have badly damaged the Royal image. Leaving a party he was drunk, driving too fast and killed a young musician in the streets of Kathmandu -- but the Prince was never prosecuted.

21:55

Dixit

Dixit: So in the period when there was no information coming out in this complete period of mayhem that we underwent, it was very easy for people to jump to the conclusion that this must be a conspiracy where Paras, who already known as a bad character, might have had a role to play.

22:14

Maoist rally

Hardaker: Amidst the growing uncertainty, the government has called on the Maoists to halt the violence, to give the parties time to negotiate.

22:36

Maoist: If the government ignores the peoples calls for justice by using guns, the party will fight back with guns.

Hardaker: The Maoists, for their part, are daring the government to bring it on – a challenge to civil war which is galvanising Nepal’s political leaders.

22:57

Madhar

Super:

Madhar Nepal

Opposition Leader

Hardaker: What happens if negotiation fails? What happens if it cannot be solved through the political process, what then?

Madhar: It will be terrible, terrible. It means civil war that will be very unfortunate for the nation. In that case, the nation will lose. In that case, no one, no people will gain.

23:07

Deuba

Super:

Sher Bahadur Deuba

Prime Minister. Nepal

Hardaker: Isn’t the next logical step, if negotiation fails, a violent uprising?

Deuba: Why should negotiation fail, I’m hopeful neg will succeed.

The palace’s offering to the people

Singing

Hardaker: This is the palace’s offering to the people -- a choral rendering of a special verse penned to commemorate the deaths of the royal family. Yet it seems oddly out of tune with life outside the palace walls today.

Singing

Hardaker: And with the nation’s protector, King Birendra, gone, there now seems little to stop the old order being swept away.

24:23

Ketaki

Ketaki: I have known four kings now. It seems at the present moment the Nepalese haven’t been able to handle a democratic Nepal. They feel exploited, probably by politicians, probably by the monarchy, but I’ve never seen Nepal this low or the Nepalese people this low in all my life.

24:33

Singing

Credits:

Nepal

Reporter: David Hardaker

Camera: Neale Maude

Graphics: Ann Connor

Editor: Garth Thomas

Producer: Ian Altschwager

25:05