Under pressure from Madhesi parties, Parliament on Wednesday issued a ruling to the government to immediately make public the High-Level Probe Commission’s report, led by Girish Chandra Lal, former justice at the Supreme Court. The report was prepared after investigating cases of violence reported during a month’s long protest in Tarai.

Speaker Krishna Bahadur Mahara issued the ruling after Rastriya Janata Party Nepal obstructed the meeting of the House of Representatives demanding to make public the report submitted to the government over a year ago. The Lal-led commission had submitted the report to then Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba in December 2017. The commission was formed in February 2016 to look into the atrocities committed during the Madhes and Tharu protests in 2015, which were organised against the drafting and promulgation of the Constitution of Nepal.

The Madhes-based parties, which have long been demanding that the report be made public, started exerting pressure on the government recently after Resham Chaudhary, an elected member of the House of Representatives, was convicted for masterminding the Tikapur carnage which took the life of 11 people, including a toddler. The RJPN has been claiming the incident should be treated politically. “The political incident has been criminalised, as the Lal-report is not public,” said Raj Kishore Yadav, a presidium member of the RJPN, in the Lower House before restoring the obstruction. The House meeting, which was adjourned for 10 minutes, resumed following the ruling from the speaker.

Protests had erupted in the run-up to the Constitution promulgation, as regional parties opposed the plans of four major forces to push through the finalisation of the statute in the Constituent Assembly. The commission investigated a total of 3,264 complaints  registered to it.

According to the report, 66 people—including 10 police personnel, an 18-month-old child, four-year old Samman Patel and 15-year-old Nitu Yadav—were killed during the movement. Of them, 62, including the police officials, were declared martyrs, while four had not been conferred the status. The commission visited 18 districts for the probe. In Tikapur of Kailali, 10 policemen and an 18-month-old child were brutally killed by agitators in August 2015. The report has recommended that the government strengthen the mechanism to control riots and agitations.

The seven-member commission was mandated to probe the incidents that took place during the Madhes movement, to find facts about the incidents, to recommend compensation for the victims and take action against those held responsible for the killings.