KATHMANDU, JANUARY 14Nepali authorities have failed to end impunity for the ongoing abuses by security forces, said the Human Rights Watch. UN chief: Rule of law risks becoming `Rule of Lawlessness' Human rights issues inadequately covered during elections Deaths caused by excessive or unnecessary force while policing protests, as well as deaths in custody and allegations of torture, are rarely if ever credibly investigated, nor are perpetrators brought to justice, it said. According to the World Report 2023 published by the HRW based on the events reported in 2022, 20-year-old Dalit Sundar Harijan died in Rolpa jail in western Nepal on May 18.

As per the authorities, his death was due to suicide.

Harijan had been convicted of theft of mobile phones while he was still a minor, but was sent to an adult jail.

He had been due for release in 2020.

However, he was transferred to Rolpa, where he was serving the sentence of another man, convicted of offences related to organised crime, who had been released in his place.An initial government inquiry led by a committee of prison staff absolved all the officials.

A subsequent home ministry investigation, part of which was obtained by the HRW, implicated prison officials in swapping the two men's identities and indicated that there may be suspicious circumstances related to Harijan's death.

"However, the report was not published, and no action was announced," it said.On June 6, an 18-year-old woman, Nabina Tharu, of Bardiya district was killed when police used tear gas and live ammunition against villagers who had blocked a highway demanding that the government to do the needful to protect them from wild animals from a nearby national park.

The government responded by appointing an investigative committee comprising police and officials from the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, but no action is known to have followed, the HRW said.The international rights body has also drawn attention to the deteriorating condition of women's and girls' rights.

According to HRW, a series of rape allegations led to protests and calls to address widespread sexual violence in Nepal.

Official statistics show that the number of recorded rapes had risen in recent years.

The victims disproportionately belong to marginalised social groups, including Dalits.In June, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the prime minister's office and elsewhere around the country after a 24-year-old woman used social media to describe how she had been drugged, raped, filmed, and then blackmailed eight years earlier.During that time, Nepal's rape law contained a statute of limitations that prevented allegations more than one year old from being filed with the police.

Parliament's decision to extend the statute of limitations to either two or three years, depending on the age of the victim, still denies access to justice in countless cases.Victims of conflict-related sexual violence perpetrated during Nepal's 1996- 2006 armed conflict are among those affected by the statute of limitations, which is not addressed by the new transitional justice bill.

No perpetrator has been brought to justice.

In May, the government announced that it would provide interim relief to the victims, but the programme has not yet been designed or implemented.A version of this article appears in the print on January 15, 2023, of The Himalayan Times. .

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