Jonathan Gregson was born and raised in India. He read and taught history at Oxford and Queen’s University in Canada before entering financial journalism. After working on the Sunday Telegraph’s city desk, he moved into travel writing, contributing regularly to the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, Independent on Sunday and Time Out and won the Travelex Travel Writers Award 2000. He is the author of Kingdoms Beyond the Clouds, Bullet Up the Grand Trunk Road and Blood Against the Snow as well as Massacre at the Palace.
THE FAMILY REUNION
The invitations to the usual Friday soirée at Tribhuvan Sadan had been sent out by the Palace Secretariat, as usual. Only members of the royal family and their in-laws were on the list. It was to be an informal family gathering: first drinks, and then a late buffet dinner at which everyone helped themselves. No ADCs or bodyguards would need to be present, since this was a strictly private occasion held in the safest cordon of the palace. Servants came only to bring in the food or refresh the ice as required. The king and queen, their three adult children, and some twenty other royal relations were expected.
There was nothing unusual. Such informal family reunions had been going on for nearly thirty years. The tradition was started by King Birendra himself, shortly after he ascended the throne. It was a good way, he thought, to keep the extended royal family together. The gatherings were usually held on the third Friday of the Nepalese month. In the Nepalese lunar calendar, the date fell on June 1.
The venue for the family gathering shifted around the palace complex according to who was host that evening. Sometimes it was held at Sri Sadan, the private apartments of the king and queen. At other times it was at the queen mother’s residence. On June 1 it was the turn of the crown prince to play host, so the guests were invited to his private residence at Tribhuvan Sadan, the cluster of buildings that had grown around the hall where the king’s grandfather used to receive guests.
Now the original hall was used mainly as a billiards room, though it had been enlarged into an L-shaped room with a bar area, a music center, and an adjacent sitting room. It opened up onto a veranda and gardens on one side. The crown prince’s private apartments and bedchamber were just to the north, across a little bridge that spanned a stream leading to an ornamental pond. Other additions had been made to Tribhuvan Sadan over the years, obscuring the building’s original plan but making it a comfortable enough spot for a family get-together.
For this evening, the six sofas in the billards room had thoughtfully been arranged in two semicircles – one at each end, so the elderly royals could sit and chat together apart from the more boisterous younger members of the family. When dinner was served, usually quite late in the evening, they would move to the dining room next door, where the food was already laid out. It was very informal. For the immediate members of the royal family, who as part of their “jobs” had to attend endless banquets and receptions, such cozy informality was a welcome relief. It was good to be able to talk without always having the servants around.
The only slight deviation from routine practice was that the invited guests had all been phoned personally by the crown prince’s ADC to confirm they were attending. Usually, if anyone were to trouble to check on this, it would have been the queen’s ADC and not the crown prince’s. It was only a minor alteration to the customary form, not the kind of thing to think about twice.
*
The evening light was fading as the crown prince crossed the bridge from his personal apartments to the main part of Tribhuvan Sadan. He had showered and changed since returning from the tea party with the royal guru, and seemed to be in a much better mood. As host for the evening, it was incumbent upon him to be there well before any of the guests arrived. He was accompanied by his usual ADC, Major Gajendra Bohara. He went to the bar and poured himself a stiff whiskey. From the generous choice available he selected his favorite brand, The Famous Grouse.
Dipendra told his ADC to stay with him while he was waiting for the first guests to arrive. He moved down to the billiards table and had Major Bohara feed him balls so that he could practice some shots. Servants were setting the dinner places next door. The clock ticked on toward 7:30 p.m., when the guests were supposed to arrive.
The first to appear was Maheshwar Kumar Singh. It was his habit to arrive early. Maheshwar had been born into an Indian princely family and had married one of King Birendra’s aunts. He had lived in Kathmandu for more than forty years and was a regular at the Friday night gatherings. A dapper figure in his Nepali cap and tight-fitting trousers, he bowed respectfully to the crown prince upon entering the room. Dipendra asked him what he would have to drink and poured out a whiskey with ice and water. At this point, the crown prince appeared to be “completely normal,” smiling and making small talk.
Next to arrive was another of the king’s uncles by marriage and a member of a great Nepali dynasty, the seventy-four-year-old Rabi Shamsher Rana. A retired general of the Royal Nepal Army, he too was a regular guest, though since his wife’s death four years previously he had attended the family reunions alone. As acting bartender for the evening, the crown prince served him a large scotch. Rabi toyed with it as other guests arrived, for the tumbler had been filled to the brim, and he could no longer drink as he had in the old days. Dipendra asked Rabi whether he would like a game of billiards, to which the old general replied that he could not play properly because he had hurt his hand in an accident.
The queen appeared, wearing a red sari, just as the king’s three sisters, Princesses Shanti, Sharada, and Shobha, arrived. Then Prince Nirajan wandered in with a CD in his hand. Princess Shruti was accompanied by her husband, Kumar Gorakh, but was without their two young daughters. There had been another party for the youngsters the previous week; this was for adult royals only. Besides, it was only a short distance to the palace from their family house in Kesar Mahal.
By now a stream of vehicles with assorted royal cousins and aunts aboard was entering by the palace’s West Gate. Smartly uniformed guards snapped to attention and saluted as they drove first up a tree-lined avenue toward the main palace before turning left, past the back of the Secretariat buildings, to Tribhuvan Sadan. The royal guests were dropped off outside the ADC’s office, from which it is but a short walk through a flower-filled garden to the veranda entrance to the billiards room. Cousin Paras arrived with his mother, Princess Komal, his sister Prerana, and his elegant Indian-born wife, Himani. He was escorting all the ladies this evening since his father, Prince Gyanendra, was out of town.
The king’s other brother, Dhirendra, arrived along with his three daughters and his son-in-law, Captain Rajiv Shahi. Following his divorce, Dhirendra had lost his royal title and all the privileges that go with it. But plain Mr. Dhirendra Shah was back in favor with the king, who still considered his youngest brother very much a part of the royal family. Moreover, recently he had been on better terms with his former wife, Princess Prekshya, who had also been on the invitation list for that evening. But she was unable to attend.
Another royal divorcée, Mrs. Ketaki Chester, arrived, as did her mother, Princess Helen, and her physically tiny, immensely sharp-witted sister, Princess Jayanti. Princess Helen was there mainly to talk to her sister-in-law, the queen mother, and they were to spend almost the entire evening closeted together in a separate room.
The crown prince busied himself welcoming guests and dispensing drinks. The younger crowd sat at the end of the room farthest from the billiards table, where they could smoke without being noticed. Dipendra was a heavy smoker, but even though he was nearly thirty he dared not light up in the presence of the king or queen mother. It was contrary to protocol. If he was smoking when his father appeared he would immediately stub out the cigarette and have someone carry it away surreptitiously.
Dipendra joined the young set and started talking with Cousin Paras. As ever, the “marriage question” was in the air, and Dipendra told Paras he had been called in by his parents to discuss it. Paras did not mention it for the time being because it seemed obvious to him that the crown prince had been drinking. “What will you have?” asked Dipendra, still acting the host. Paras said he was thinking of just having a Coke, to which Dipendra replied, “You just want a Coke? I’ve been drinking whiskey.”
Others present had begun to notice oddities in the crown prince’s behavior. Dipendra was a hardened drinker, capable of downing a dozen whiskeys without his composure becoming ruffled. “He certainly wasn’t drunk,” commented Ketaki Chester. “Normally when he’d been drinking he just went quiet. This time he was putting on an act, bumping into tables and so on.” Something abnormal was going on.
Paras asked the crown prince what had happened during the talk with his parents. “Oh, nothing,” he replied. “We’ve been talking about the marriage. I talked with my mother and grand-mother, and they both said no. I will talk about it to His Majesty on Sunday.”
Dipendra was closer to his cousin than to most of his immediate family. He admired Paras’s recklessness and envied his “bad boy” reputation, while he had to play the “model prince.” Paras had backed him in his decision to marry Devyani and remained Dipendra’s closest confidant for discussions about his troubled marriage prospects.
Around eight o’clock Dipendra left his guests to drive around the other side of the main palace to Mahendra Manzil, the queen mother’s residence. As host, it was his duty to greet his grandmother and escort her to the party. Whether anything was said between them concerning the marriage situation is not known, for Queen Mother Ratna has remained resolutely silent on the subject to this day. What was clear to everyone present was that when the crown prince returned to the party his mood had changed for the worse.
The queen mother went straight to the smaller room, known as Baitho Bathak, where she was accustomed to receive visitors. The older royals all trooped in to perform the ritual welcome on entering the queen mother’s presence and then to pay their respects. Dipendra stayed behind in the billards room, pulled out his mobile phone, and called Devyani.
They talked for a little over a minute. The contents of their conversation remain Devyani’s secret. It could well have been no more than small talk. They were in love, after all, and because they often could not see each other the two of them were in the habit of constantly chatting on their mobile phones. Devyani was preparing to go out to a party hosted by some wealthy Indian friends, Sanjay and Shilpa Dugar. If the crown prince could get away early after the family dinner party ended, it had been tentatively agreed they should meet afterward. But something said during their conversation appears to have upset Dipendra. His next call after Devyani was to his ADC, Gajendra Bohara. “Fetch my cigarettes,” he commanded brusquely.
Similar orders had been received many times before, and Bohara asked a royal orderly called Ram Krishna KC to make up a packet of five of the prince’s “specials,” containing the usual hashish plus some mysterious black substance. ADC Bohara then proceeded to walk over to the billiards room. Rather than enter a room full of royals, he stopped at the east door and entrusted the cigarettes to Prince Paras. It seemed the right thing to do, since Paras was all too aware of the crown prince’s smoking habits.
*
Only six minutes passed between Dipendra’s ordering up the drugs and the next call. It was incoming, and it was from Devyani’s personal landline. Dipendra did not accept the call, so it was transferred automatically to his ADC. Devyani said she was worried about the crown prince. His voice had sounded slurred. Could Bohara check out the situation? Curiously, she asked the ADC to look for him in his private rooms because he might not be feeling well.
Devyani was obviously very anxious about something. Once she had spoken to Bohara, she phoned another of Dipendra’s regular ADCs, Raju Karki, on his home number. He was off duty and preparing to fly out on a trip to the United States for further military training. Devyani insisted he go immediately to the palace. Whatever she told him, it must have been persuasive. He dressed in his ADC’s uniform and drove over to Narayanhiti at once.
Maybe she knew more than she was letting on. She was familiar with Dipendra’s sudden mood swings and what he was like on drugs. But why ask the ADCs to look in his rooms? After all, he had just called her from the party.
At precisely the same time that Devyani was talking to Raju Karki, the atmosphere within the billards room became unsettlingly bizarre. The crown prince began to fall about as though he were roaring drunk. He then slumped to the floor and appeared to have passed out. It was as out of character as it was embarrassing. Fortunately, most of the older family members were with the queen mother in her separate chamber. The king had not yet arrived but was expected at any minute. For the crown prince to be found unconscious would be a catastrophic breach of protocol, made worse by the fact that he was supposed to be hosting the evening.
Paras tried to revive Dipendra. “Not here, it’s inappropriate,”he tried to tell him. “The king has arrived.” But it was no use. The crown prince appeared to be out cold. So four of the younger generation decided the best thing was to get him out of the billiards room immediately. They staggered under the weight of his unwieldy body, brother Nirajan and Captain Shahi taking an arm each while Cousin Paras held up his feet. Princess Shruti’s husband, Kumar Gorakh, followed behind as this bizarre cortege lurched over the little bridge and up the steps leading to the crown prince’s private apartments. They hauled him to his bedchamber and placed him on a low divan. Switching off the lights, they left Dipendra to sleep it off and returned to the party in time to be present for the king’s arrival, as was only proper.
*
King Birendra had been working late, as usual. This particular evening he had been closeted with his principal press secretary, Mohan Bahadur Panday, going over the details of a rare interview with a magazine editor. After years of self-imposed seclusion, Birendra was becoming more open with the press. As the discussion drew to a close, Panday asked and was granted permission to leave at about half past eight.
Rather than be driven around to Tribhuvan Sadan, Birendra chose to walk. Since his heart attack two and a half years earlier, the king had been advised to take more exercise. It was only five minutes’ walk from his office, but even so he was accompanied by one of his ADCs, Colonel Sundar Pratap Rana. When he reached Tribhuvan Sadan, the king went straight to the small chamber where the queen mother was holding court, so that he could immediately pay his respects. Colonel Rana left him at the entrance, knowing, like the other ADCs, that this was a “family only” evening, then walked on to the ADCs’ office. It was less than a minute away. Both he and the other officers on duty could easily be called, if needed.
The queen mother was surrounded by royal relations when the king walked in. They hurried to greet him, then everyone raised a toast to Queen Mother Ratna’s health. She responded by suggesting that they replenish their glasses. In the world of palace etiquette, where things are said indirectly, this was a clear hint that she wanted a private conference. So most of the royal uncles and aunts departed, leaving only King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya, and Princess Helen with the queen mother. The four of them remained closeted in the private chamber for twenty minutes. What precisely they discussed is not known, though with three senior royal ladies present the subject of marriages – and not just Dipendra’s, but plans for his brother, Nirajan, to marry a suitable Rana girl – may well have received their attention.
There are many reasons why Dipendra, intoxicated or not, should have wanted to absent himself while this kind of conference was going on. It was humiliating to be talked about in such a manner. Besides, he knew that all three royal ladies did not support his plans to marry Devyani. He did not need to hear echoes of their disapproval. It was preferable to absent himself entirely, even if it meant acting the drunken idiot.
The opinion of many who saw him falling about – that he was only acting rather than physically intoxicated – seems be borne out by what happened next. He had been left in his bedroom, apparently fast asleep on the divan, at a little after half past eight. He must have roused himself almost immediately, for just a few minutes later two servants sent by ADC Gajendra Bohara after he received the telephone call from Devyani found the crown prince trying to undress himself on the bedroom floor. Together they helped him, after which Dipendra went to the bathroom and apparently threw up. One of the servants believes he heard retching noises through the bathroom door. The crown prince then returned to his bedchamber and ordered the two servants out.
The next thing he did – just seven minutes after being deposited apparently unconscious on the divan – was to call Devyani again. Vomiting may have helped to clear his head, but it seemed to have been a remarkably swift recovery. She took the call on her mobile phone. Her memories of what was said are confused: “He said he’d call tomorrow; then he said good night.” Next, according to Devyani, he asked again about something he had already mentioned earlier, but then hung up before she could reply. She says she then called back, and Dipendra told her: “I am about to sleep. I’ll call again in the morning.”
Strangely, there is no record of that second call in the otherwise meticulous log kept by Nepal Telecom, only of an attempt to reach him from the land line of Devyani’s friend, Debina Malla, which was automatically transferred to the palace switchboard, as is customary. Whoever was calling in hung up after one second. Obviously they wanted to talk to Dipendra and no one else.
In his last conversation with Devyani, the crown prince seems clearly to have intended to return to bed. In fact, he did the opposite. He dressed himself again, this time in military fatigues: camouflage vest, black socks, ill-matching camouflage combat jacket and trousers, his army boots, and a pair of black leather gloves. His next move was still more sinister. He assembled and checked his weaponry: the favorite 9 mm. Glock pistol; a stubby MP5K submachine gun; his preferred assault rifle, the Colt M-16; and a SPAS twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun, along with magazine pouches and webbing for carrying spare ammunition.
As Dipendra was about to leave his rooms, his faithful orderly, Ram Krishna, called out: “Shall the emergency bag be brought, sir?” The emergency bag contained weatherproof clothing, insect spray, a flashlight, spare batteries, and other items that might come in handy when the crown prince went trekking. Seeing his master dressed up in military gear and carrying guns, Ram Krishna quite reasonably assumed he was going on some overnight sortie outside the palace. “It’s not necessary now,” was Dipendra’s curt response.
*
Once the king had ended his private conversation with his stepmother he rejoined the rest of the guests in the billiards room. The talk among the older men was about the army and whether it might be deployed against the Maoist guerrillas – all in a guarded, indirect manner, of course. The king, eschewing alcohol, was drinking a Coke on his doctor’s advice, but he nonetheless sent for a cigar. It was one of the pleasures he still allowed himself occasionally.
One of the royal uncles, Rabi Shamsher Rana, engaged him in small talk. Another uncle, Maheshwar Kumar Singh, came up and apologized for his wife being unable to attend the party because of her arthritis. Birendra commented that many family members suffered from gout, uric acid, and high cholesterol.
He was still holding forth about the family’s tendency to high cholesterol when something moved just beyond the French doors. At first, nobody noticed the “dark figure” dressed in camouflage fatigues, a peaked cap, black combat boots, and black leather gloves.
General Rabi claims he first recognized the crown prince and realized he was carrying at least two guns. “I thought he looked at me,” the old general recalls, “and I think he smiled.” Others describe Dipendra’s face as expressionless throughout. Everyone present agrees that he never spoke a word.
“The king was standing by the billiards table,” Ketaki remembers. “I was nearer the door than the others and saw Dipendra walk in.” At first she thought he was playing some kind of practical joke. “Isn’t he too old to be dressing up like this?” she asked her sister, Princess Jayanti.
Most of the people in the room thought Dipendra had come to show his father something. General Rabi saw the little MP5K submachine gun and assumed it was a replica or toy gun. At first King Birendra just stood motionless beside the billiards table, the glass of Coke still in his hand. Then he took a step toward his son. Without uttering a single word, Dipendra advanced with a gun in each hand and released three rounds at the king.
The retort of the submachine gun in such a confined space was deafening. Maheshwar, who was standing near the king, at first thought it had come from the TV. “It was very near my ears, and I thought my eardrums had burst. I blinked. I turned to see what was happening.”
Others were better placed to observe as events moved rapidly on. “The gun rode up and some bullets went into the ceiling,” says Ketaki. “It didn’t seem that dramatic. There wasn’t lots of ceiling coming down on us or anything.”
“There was a burst of three shots,” specified General Rabi Rana. He knew his firing drill: Bursts came in fives, in threes, or just single shots. But he had no idea how to react to the situation unfolding before his eyes. “I just stood there watching. I knew he was a happy-go-lucky person, but this was no way to fool around. Then I saw the blood rushing out of the king’s side. I screamed for an ambulance, but it seems no one heard.”
During that first attack King Birendra was struck by two 9 mm. bullets from the stubby German-made submachine gun. For a few moments he remained standing, long enough to put down his glass very slowly. Looking toward his son, he said very quietly: “Kay gardeko?” – “What have you done?”
According to General Rabi, who was standing beside him, King Birendra started to collapse toward the left. Blood was already seeping out of a wound to his neck. The crown prince meanwhile retreated through the garden doors and out onto the veranda.
Still no one in the room moved. They could not believe what had just happened. “We did not think that he intended to kill,” said the king’s youngest sister, Princess Shobha. “We thought the gun had gone off by mistake.”
Once Dipendra had returned outside, the wave of stunned silence that had engulfed the room evaporated. General Rabi and others rushed to assist the king. Dhirendra’s son-in-law, Captain Ravi Shahi, was a trained army doctor. “His back!” he cried out, calling for assistance to support the king, who by then had collapsed on the floor and was bleeding profusely.
Suddenly there was total confusion. “People were in a complete panic about who or what was going on,” Maheshwar testified. “I felt the queen had left. Perhaps she went outside? Maybe to the back? But she left. Then Princess Shanti began waving both her hands, wanting to know what had happened, and immediately went outside. Probably to call for help, what else? And as I recall, Princess Sharada also followed her.”
Although King Birendra lay stricken, having taken two heavy-caliber bullets fired at point-blank range, he was still alive. Captain Shahi tried to staunch the flow of blood from the neck wound. “I am also hit in the stomach,” murmured the king.
At that moment Dipendra strode back into the billiards room. Outside, on the veranda, he had swiftly rearmed. The Italian-made pump-action shotgun had been discarded. This time he carried the M-16 in his right hand, the machine pistol in his left.
He must have seen the group trying to help the king, heard his father’s voice, and knew his mission was not accomplished yet. “If the crown prince had not returned at that precise moment,” a palace secretary said later, “he might have thought the king was dead. Then things would have turned out very differently.”
The crown prince had thrown down the submachine gun he had fired at the king. Possibly it had jammed, though later it was found to be in perfect working order. More probably he wanted someone else in the room to pick it up. That way their fingerprints would be left on the weapon used against the king, not his, since he taken care to wear gloves throughout. Or maybe through some twisted sense of personal honor, he wanted to give his victims a chance to strike back, to justify what was coming.
It was the wounded king who made a move to pick up the fallen submachine gun. But as he reached toward it, Princess Shobha stopped him. “I said, ‘Leave this,’ and snatched it. The magazine came out and I threw it away.” It was a snap decision, no doubt based on her desire to prevent any more bloodshed. But it was one she has lived to regret. She had mistakenly thought that she was disposing of the only weapon in the room. As the magazine fell free and clattered to the floor, the last realistic chance of stopping the killing was thrown away.
Ketaki recalls how careful Dipendra was not to allow anyone to come around behind him. With hindsight, she sees the way in which this first phase of attack was executed as being “coldly calculated.”
Dipendra had, after all, selected his prime target: his father, the king. With him out of the way, the crown prince would by the Royal Constitution of Nepal automatically be proclaimed king, whether he was a murderer or not. “The king is dead; long live the king” still applies in such cases, for the throne can never be left vacant. And if Dipendra had been declared king, then someone else could have been made a scapegoat for the royal murder. All the other family members, placed under house arrest, would be cowed into agreeing to the official version of events. And Dipendra would finally be in charge.
Certainly Dipendra’s subsequent actions show he needed to be certain he had killed the king. Now armed with the M-16 assault rifle, he fired off a burst at his father, again at point-blank range.
The king’s youngest brother, Dhirendra, was the first to make a move toward the crown prince. “Baba, you have done enough damage,” he said. When his appeal to reason failed, Dhirendra tried to restrain his nephew physically. Dhirendra was a powerfully built man and had been trained in karate, but he was unarmed. Before he could get near enough he too was cut down by a burst of automatic fire through the chest.
Any warped logic or planning that might have explained Dipendra’s actions so far seems to have been abandoned completely at this stage. Two others were caught in the fusillade that killed the King’s brother. Kumar Khadga went down with bullet wounds to the chest that were to prove fatal. Princess Shruti’s husband, Kumar Gorakh, was shot in the neck but survived. He recalls being targeted by the light on the M-16’s telescopic sight. “When he held up the gun there was a flash. I thought, ‘This is the end.’ That was when I was hit.”
Princess Shruti was rushing to her father’s aid when she heard her husband mutter, “I also have been hit.” She changed direction and tried to comfort her husband, cradling him in her arms. Sadly, that was enough to attract the gunman’s attention. He fired again. Princess Shruti was wounded through the elbow and sustained internal injuries that would prove fatal.
Kumar Khadga had also fallen out in the open. His wife, Princess Sharada, went to him and lay over his body, sobbing, “What has happened to you, what has happened to you?” Blood spread across the floor.
*
A second time Dipendra retreated through the doors to the veranda. He was only outside a few seconds before advancing once more. Now he let off long bursts of gunfire, spraying the room indiscriminately. Three of his aunts, princesses Shanti, Sharada, and Jayanti, went down in the hail of bullets. Princess Sharada was trying to shield her husband with her own body. Princess Jayanti was trying to retrieve a mobile phone so that she could call the ADCs. That may have inflamed the gunman even further. He fired another burst into the fallen bodies. All of them sustained fatal injuries.
Ketaki was luckier, in some respects. She took one bullet through the lower arm and another that blew away the top of her shoulder, but she lived. “I didn’t realize it at the time,” she said, “but the blood had spurted all over my face and head. It must have looked like I had taken a bullet in the head, which is probably why I am still alive.” Another of Dipendra’s aunts, Princess Komal, had a bullet pass through her left lung. It missed her heart by centimeters; she was extremely fortunate to survive. As the wife of King Gyanendra, she is now Queen Komal of Nepal.
Most of those hit had been standing or lying out in the middle of the main hall, where there was no furniture to hide behind and any movement would immediately draw the gunman’s attention. Another group had taken cover behind tables and a sofa at the far end of the sitting room. It was Paras who had urged them to take cover there, shouting to others still out in the open to duck and stay out of the line of fire.
Meanwhile, the killer was moving about the room. He approached the body of the king and kicked it around with his army boot, to make absolutely sure his father was dead. He did the same to his younger sister. Her wounded husband, Gorakh, recalls how methodically Dipendra “returned and picked out those who had been hurt, took aim and shot, took aim and shot.” It was chilling. Ketaki saw him “swing the gun so casually and just shoot them again. It was deliberate. You could tell by the look in his eyes.”
Then Dipendra walked over toward where most of the survivors lay huddling. Cousin Paras saw him standing by a tall chair right in front of them. “We fell in his direct gaze,” says Paras, who began pleading for their lives. “What have you done, sir?... Please leave... What are you doing?... Only we are here... just us... Please go.”
“Well, if he had hit all of us...” Paras left the ensuing bloodbath to the imagination. Besides himself, there were Maheshwar Kumar and General Rabi; his sister, Prerana; his wife, Himani; and three of Dhirendra’s daughters. One of them, Princess Sitasma, was hiding behind the sofa. She had recently returned from being a student in Scotland, and only seconds before had narrowly escaped a bullet that went past her forehead. From her place of hiding she looked up to see her gun-toting cousin looming over them all. “Dipendra came, looked at us, and left,” is how she put it.
For the gunman it was a bizarre exercise in absolute power, holding the lives of these people in his hands. But with a flick of the head, as though to signify, “You may live,” he left the room. If he had decided to fire again at that group the eventual death count would have been doubled.
*
The king and twelve other family members lay dead or wounded inside the billiards room. But so far Queen Aishwarya and her younger son, Prince Nirajan, had been spared. Shortly after the firing started they had both gone outside. Ketaki remembers seeing the queen “marching out of the door” in pursuit of Dipendra. At the same time, the badly wounded Dhirendra said, “Either she’ll disarm him or she’ll get shot too.” It was an all too accurate assessment.
“I called out to her twice,” Ketaki recalls. “I said, ‘No, don’t go.’” She also saw Nirajan running after his mother. “It was the last I saw of them. Then I heard some shrieks.” What exactly happened outside is not at all clear. None of the main protagonists lived to tell what really happened. Other witnesses saw or heard things only from a distance, and their accounts are confused and at times contradict each other.
The king’s ADC on duty that night says he “heard gunshots and Her Majesty’s, a woman’s voice, saying ‘Call the doctor.’” The Queen’s ADC, who should have recognized her voice, is not so certain. “It could have been Shruti’s or Her Majesty’s voice,” he testified. Neither of these senior ADCs moved from their office to investigate the firing. Instead, they both say they immediately tried to call the doctor. One used the ADC’s office line; the other was on his mobile. Neither of them was successful.
The shooting inside the ballroom was all over in three to four minutes. During that critical period not one of the ADCs, whose office was less than 150 yards away, made it to the scene of the slaughter quickly enough to intervene. The junior ADC to the king, Captain Pawan Khatri, called up the military police on his radio set and then “ran forward.” By the time he reached Tribhuvan Sadan the firing had stopped. He did see “a man in combat fatigues leave from the back door, on the garden side, with a gun whose light was still on.”
Several palace servants, including kitchen boy Santa Bahadur Khadka, saw a “lady in a red sari” running through the garden. Queen Aishwarya was wearing a red sari that evening. He also saw the crown prince moving backward with guns in two hands. As he was moving backward, the woman in red was confronting him. “The two were not talking; they were running, shouting, screaming. I cannot say who was speaking. The women in the billiards room were [also] screaming.”
Santa Bahadur Khadka may not recall what was said, but others within the palace that night apparently can. For besides the public report on the “palace incident,” two other secret reports were drawn up on what actually happened that night – one for the king’s principal secretary and the other for the head of palace security. Neither has been made public. Their contents are, however, known to senior palace officials.
It appears that after the shooting inside the billiards room had stopped, the gunman retreated across the gardens toward the crown prince’s private apartments. Queen Aishwarya pursued him, followed by Prince Nirajan. She always had been a tough-minded woman, and now she was furious enough to confront the armed man in camouflage fatigues even if he had a loaded weapon in each hand. She just kept screaming at him – words including a Nepali phrase equivalent to “you filthy bastard.” It was the ultimate act of confrontation. Perhaps she felt she was invulnerable, that her own son would never dare to touch her. If so, it was a serious misjudgment.
Two bursts of automatic fire were subsequently heard coming from the garden. It seems that Prince Nirajan was shot first. That view is supported from the position in which his body was discovered and the location of the spent cartridges, since no eyewitness to his death has come forward.
Nirajan may have been trying to protect his mother against his elder brother’s fury. If so, it was a supremely brave thing to do, since Nirajan was unarmed. His own pistol, the same model 9 mm. Glock that his elder brother used, was later found inside the billiards room. It had not been fired once that night.
The twenty-two-year-old prince was shot nearly a dozen times and must have died instantly. He had two gaping bullet wounds to the head. He collapsed on the lawn in a pool of his own blood. His body was so riddled with bullets that when rescuers finally arrived they could scarcely lift it intact.
Only the queen still faced Dipendra. By now his father, sister, and brother all lay dead or dying. Only his mother lived on to challenge him.
Even now, in this eye of the storm, and after all the violence unleashed on those around her, Queen Aishwarya displayed a degree of self-confidence or recklessness that is hard to fathom. Rather than flee for her life into the surrounding darkness, the queen again approached the gunman. She ran across the garden and up the marbled steps leading to Dipendra’s bedchamber, screaming as she went. The crown prince seems to have been backing off, or at least walking backward. Maybe her hunch was that he could not bring himself to shoot his own mother. Or maybe she was heading for Dipendra’s rooms so that she could seize one of the other weapons he kept there, either to defend herself or kill the man who had murdered her husband and her two other children.
While the gunman continued to withdraw up the stairs that led to his bedchamber, she confronted him face to face. The queen had climbed seven steps when she must have realized what would happen next, for suddenly she turned around as though to flee. The gunman fired a long burst, hitting her from behind. Her skull was blown apart and most of her brains scattered over a wide area. Fragments of brain tissue, jawbone, and teeth, the red tika she had placed on her forehead, her ear-pins and broken red glass bangles were found in different places around where she fell. As with Nirajan, her body was also pumped full of bullets. Expert opinion confirms that she was shot from behind.
No one witnessed the crown prince killing his own mother. Nor did anyone actually see the final act of this tragedy. For this, Dipendra must have walked back toward the billiards room, crossing the small bridge over a stream feeding into the ornamental pond. Around this time somebody claims to have heard him shriek out “like a madman.” The next thing they heard was a single shot. Having murdered all his immediate family, Dipendra apparently turned his gun on himself.
At that very last moment, maybe even he was scared. For the clinical efficiency displayed in the shooting of so many relatives was markedly absent in this attempted suicide. Did he lose his nerve? Or was it because, for some reason, he held the pistol in his left hand? That should not have made a great difference because, although Dipendra was right-handed, when it came to firing guns he was effectively ambidextrous.
A single bullet entered just behind his left ear and went right through the brain, leaving a massive exit wound slightly higher on the right side of his head. But it was not enough to kill Dipendra outright. He was found lying on the grass, groaning loudly, near the edge of the ornamental pond. There was a Buddha statue nearby.
*
Only slowly did the full extent of the carnage inside the billiards room become apparent. The bodies of the dead and wounded lay muddled together on the blood-soaked carpet, while those lucky enough to come through unscathed were still cowering in shock. The floor was a mess of scattered articles of clothing, much of it blood-smeared, along with broken spectacles and slippers and hastily discarded whiskey glasses. After all the noise of gunfire, there now followed an eerie silence.
“King Birendra was the only one who moved at all, making signals with his hands. All the others were quiet,” said Ketaki, who by then had already lost a lot of blood. “Nobody was crying out for help,” she explained, “because we knew help would come from somewhere. Then I heard Paras’s voice.”
The younger cousin with a bad reputation seems to have been the only person capable of doing anything. Ketaki says “Paras was very, very controlled. If anyone came out alive in that room, it is due to him.”
After Dipendra had walked away into the gardens, in pursuit of or pursued by his mother and brother, Paras got up from behind the sofas and began moving around the scene of devastation. He remembers, “There were people on the floor. I approached Dhirendra to find out what happened. He said, ‘Paras, my feet don’t move, I can’t move my feet, please move them.’ I moved them a little, but he couldn’t feel it.” The badly wounded Dhirendra then said, “I can’t see straight, look after your Aunt Ketaki.” Paras says, “Then he told me to look for the children.”
At that point Paras was still unaware that his own mother, Princess Komal, had fallen too. Then he saw her try to raise herself up and slump back down again because the dead Princess Shanti had collapsed on top of her. He helped his mother into an upright position, and she said, “I’m not well, I’m not well,” all the while holding her bloodied forehead. “At first I thought she’d been shot in the forehead,” he confessed. But on closer inspection there was no wound there. He soon ascertained that the blood was from Princess Shanti’s wounds and not his mother’s.
After that Paras ran to the queen mother, who had remained in her separate room throughout the massacre. He had heard more gunfire outside the billiards room and initially thought it came from the queen mother’s private chamber. “I ran over there,” he said, “but nothing had happened.” So he briefly explained to his grandmother and Princess Helen that the king and many others had been shot, though sparing such elderly ladies all the details.
He next ran outside to find the ADCs, who had finally arrived. He explained to them, “There are dead people as well as wounded ones. Ignore the dead, but immediately rush the wounded to hospital.” He ordered them to break down the glass panes in the French doors to permit easier evacuation.
In the event, the king was carried out first, although in Ketaki’s opinion he was by then “definitely dead.” But from there on Paras insisted that the rescuers evacuate the living wounded first, helping to get them into whatever vehicles were available and dispatching them to the hospital. Some, like Ketaki, were completely disoriented. She was losing blood fast from her shoulder wound, but still she insisted on finding her shoes because she was worried about cutting her feet on all the broken glass.
With the evacuation under way and more help arriving, Paras moved on to those still unaccounted for. “I told three people to go and look for the crown prince, the queen, and Nirajan,” he says. The crown prince’s ADC soon came running back to report that Dipendra had shot himself but was still alive. Both the queen and Nirajan were beyond hope. So Paras and ADC Gajendra Bohara loaded the two royal princes, Dipendra and Nirajan, into the same vehicle and drove them to hospital. It was a macabre load, killer and victim both propped up in the backseat together.