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24-09-2025
KATHMANDU: Nepal’s interim government, led by former Chief Justice Sushila Karki, has set up a panel to investigate the violence during anti-corruption protests this month that killed 74 people and forced Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli to quit, a minister said on Monday.
The demonstrations, which began as a Gen Z-led movement against widespread corruption and a lack of jobs, escalated into the Himalayan nation’s deadliest violence in decades.
More than 2,100 people were injured while protesters set fire to the main office complex that houses the prime minister’s office, the Supreme Court and the parliament building as well as malls, luxury hotels and showrooms that the demonstrators said were owned by people close to corrupt politicians.
Rameshwore Khanal, who Karki put in charge of the finance ministry, said the three-member panel headed by retired judge Gauri Bahadur Karki had been given three months to complete the probe.
“It will investigate … the loss of life and property during the protests, excesses by both sides and people involved in the acts of arson and vandalism during the movement,” Khanal told media.
In a social media post, former Prime Minister Oli also demanded an investigation into the violence and said his government did not order police to fire at the protesters. The protests were infiltrated by outsiders and police did not possess the type of weapons which were used to fire on the crowd, Oli said.
Karki is the former chairman of a special court that hears corruption cases in Nepal and has a reputation for honesty and integrity.
A former DJ and his obscure Nepalese non-profit used a social media app popular with video gamers to drive massive protests and become the unlikely power brokers in installing the country’s new interim leadership.
Sudan Gurung, the 36-year-old founder of Hami Nepal (We are Nepal), used the Discord messaging app and Instagram to mobilize massive demonstrations that forced Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli to resign, in the deadliest political crisis to hit the Himalayan nation in decades, a dozen people involved in the demonstrations said. The group used VPNs to access banned platforms and issued calls to action that reached tens of thousands of young people, they added. Representatives for Oli could not be contacted for comment.
“I was invited to join a group on Discord where there were about 400 members. It asked us to join the protest march a few kilometers from the parliament,” 18-year-old student Karan Kulung Rai, who is not part of the group, told media.
Hami Nepal’s early social media posts on Discord became so influential that they were referenced on national television.
As protests grew violent, the group also identified messages it termed “fake news” and shared hospital phone numbers.
Hami Nepal members, who asked not to be identified as they had used proxy names online for security reasons, said Gurung and the group’s other leaders have since become central to high-stakes decisions, including the appointment of the new interim leadership till elections are held on March 5.
They have already convinced the country’s president and army chief to appoint former Chief Justice Sushila Karki, known for her tough stance against corruption, as Nepal’s first woman prime minister in an interim capacity, three members of the group said. “I will make sure that the power lies with the people and bring every corrupt politician to justice,” Gurung said in his first press conference since the protest on Thursday. (Int’l News Desk)
