Year of living dangerously for Nepal's reporters

A police doctor, Harihar Wasti, said he conducted an autopsy of a man who resembled Sen about a month after Sen's disappearance. The body had two bullet wounds in the abdomen.

In a report prepared by the federation and cited by the Committee to Protect Journalists, Mr. Dahal documented the execution of the eight Nepalese journalists, and the detention and torture of countless others. While six of the scribes were reportedly killed by either police or the Royal Nepal Army, two were killed by Maoists, apparently on charges of spying.

Complicating investigations is the tendency of journalists here to take sides and blur the line between neutral observer and active political participant.

Om Sharma is a prime example. As chief reporter of the Janadesh - the same pro-Maoist newspaper that Krishna Sen edited - Mr. Sharma considers himself a supporter of the Maoists although not a member of the party.

"We believe in Maoism, it is the ideal for us, but we are not Maoists," says Sharma. "It is the same for journalists who take B.P. Koirala (a Nepali centrist politician) as their ideal. We believe we can bring our political mission and our journalistic mission together.

"We are fully aware that if the current cease-fire collapses, we could be arrested," adds Sharma, who was detained for 118 days during the state of emergency. "If we go alone to the village to report, we can be arrested by the Army and killed silently and thrown away in the brush. But we can't run away from danger."

While the government denies arresting or killing Sen, Takma says that her husband's last living hours were in police custody. She knows this, she says, because Army interrogators who detained her for nearly 20 days after Sen disappeared told her.

On the final day of detention, she says a senior officer came into her room and told her she would be released. "I asked the officer, 'Please tell me about my husband,' " she recalls. "The officer told me, 'He is in police custody, and in my opinion, I think he is safe.' I was comforted by this, so I just asked about his condition. I wonder now why I didn't ask to see him."

A few weeks later, newspapers reported that Sen had been killed. Takma went back to the Army officer who assured her of Sen's safety, and he denied ever telling her that Sen was in police custody. A few days after that, Takma received a second shock. The Maoist Party announced in a local newspaper that Krishna Sen was a senior Maoist leader and a martyr.

Even today, Takma finds herself questioning her husband's identity. "I don't know, I don't know," she says.

"He was concerned with poor people, with rural life. He was sympathetic to the Maoists, because they were helping the poor people. But he was not involved in actions of the People's Army, (the Maoists military wing)."

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