Before Nepali nurse Mamta Kafle Bhatt disappeared in Virginia, she sent her brother a photograph and asked him to preserve it. He later testified that it appeared to show an injury to her face and that she planned to delete it from her phone. On November 10, a Virginia jury convicted her husband, Naresh Bhatt, of her murder. The case was not a digital-inheritance dispute, and there is no reported evidence that her family was denied account access. It nevertheless illustrates why a digital record can matter long after it is shared.

What happens to other digital records when a Nepali abroad disappears or dies? A message may be potential evidence, a payslip may establish unpaid wages, and a photograph may be a family’s treasured memory. They may sit on the same phone or cloud account, but they do not call for the same kind of access.

There are four different routes through this problem. First, keep relevant material, along with its context, and seek advice before deleting, resetting or altering a device. In a suspected crime, families should contact the appropriate investigators promptly rather than try to enter an account without authority. Second, police and courts may seek relevant records using the legal powers available in the country concerned. Third, relatives or authorised representatives may ask a platform for particular information or account closure, subject to its rules and applicable law. Fourth, heirs may pursue money, property or other lawful entitlements without automatically gaining access to every private conversation.

What the platforms allow

In enquiries to major technology and messaging providers, I found differing approaches to deceased users’ accounts. Rakuten Viber provided detailed written answers: It has no digital-legacy or trusted-contact feature, and it cannot retrieve delivered end-to-end encrypted chats from its servers for relatives. In a further clarification, Viber said families can request closure of a deceased user’s account through its support form. Typical documents include a death certificate, the deceased user’s Viber number, proof of the requester’s legal authority, identification and contact details. Cross-border requests are considered case by case. Closure does not grant access to private messages; copies may separately exist on recipients’ devices or in backups.

Other services allow planning. Google’s Inactive Account Manager lets users choose trusted contacts and selected categories of data to share when an account becomes inactive. Apple’s Digital Legacy provides designated contacts access to eligible information but excludes passwords and passkeys in iCloud Keychain. Microsoft’s OneDrive Digital Legacy offers a trusted contact read-only access to OneDrive files, not control of an Outlook account.

Apple and Microsoft directed my enquiries to their published documentation; Google’s information comes from its public guidance. There is no universal right to inherit an account or its credentials, and procedures for deceased users are not the same as those used in criminal investigations.

Beyond an exceptional case

Consider a migrant worker who dies abroad leaving unpaid wages, insurance benefits or savings. The family may need a payslip or employment contract stored in an email account. Here the problem is not criminal evidence but a financial entitlement. The asset, the evidence needed to claim it and the account containing that evidence are not the same thing.

The objective should be to authenticate the claimant, not to make the claimant impersonate the deceased. Where possible, an employer or financial institution should verify a widow’s entitlement and provide the necessary records through an authorised process. She should not need her husband’s email password to establish what she is owed.

Nepal Police figures show that 1,401 bodies of Nepali migrant workers were repatriated in fiscal year 2024/25. That figure says nothing about digital-access disputes. It does, however, underline the scale of the administrative challenges families may face after a death overseas.

Choice before crisis

Insurance arrangements have made the idea of nomination familiar. Digital services should make it easier for users to nominate who may receive selected information after death, what may be shared and what should remain private.

Google, Apple and Microsoft already offer different forms of advance planning, but their controls vary. Someone might choose to share family photographs and employment documents while keeping private messages and passwords inaccessible. These choices should be easy to find, change or withdraw. Nomination would not transfer an account or automatically override encryption, another person’s privacy or applicable law. The principle is choice before crisis.

What Nepal can do

Nepal already has laws on succession, privacy and electronic transactions. The bigger challenge may be helping families navigate a fragmented system of records and institutions across borders.

Embassies and relevant agencies could give families simple guidance on preserving digital material in suspected-crime cases and contacting investigators. One public page could explain where families should turn for unpaid wages, insurance, bank balances and Foreign Employment Board assistance, and what documents they may need. Pre-departure orientation could also cover basic digital planning without encouraging password sharing.

Where existing law is sufficient, make the process clearer. Where genuine gaps remain, clarify the law. Nepal does not need a new law or agency for every digital problem.

For generations, Nepalis leaving for work abroad have prepared passports, contracts and emergency contacts. But our lives no longer fit entirely into folders and suitcases. When someone dies overseas, there may be wages to claim, records to locate and memories to preserve. When someone disappears, a photograph or message may matter for a very different reason.

A family should not have to inherit every private conversation to recover what it is lawfully owed. Nor should important evidence become unreachable simply because it was stored digitally. Our digital lives should not automatically belong to whoever comes next. We should have more say in what happens to them.