The Metropolitan Crime Division on Tuesday night arrested two cadres of Netra Bikram Chand-led Communist Party of Nepal from a rented room in Sundhara, Kathmandu.

According to the division, Bir Bahadur Kadayat ‘Ranbir’, a member of the mid-central special task force of the Chand outfit, and Chandra Bahadur Tiruwa, party’s Jumla district secretary,  were arrested.

“Kadayat is the main accused in blasts at Nakkhu and Basundhara. He was the one who planted the improvised explosive devices in both the places,” Senior Superintendent of Police Dhiraj Pratap Singh, chief of the division, told the Post.

The blast at Nakkhu on February 22 had claimed one human life and severely injured two others while there was no human casualty in the blast at Basundhara on March 8.

On March 23, police had arrested Hemanta Prakash Oli ‘Sudarshan’, another key

person behind the two blasts, along with eight others from Kavre.

“Kadayat has been sent to Lalitpur police for further legal procedures,” said Singh.

The division had also confiscated letter pads, pamphlets, bills and three rounds of pistol bullets from the duo’s room. According to the division, Tiruwa has been charged with illegal possession of weapons and is being further interrogated.

Besides carrying out the blasts, the Chand outfit, an offshoot of the Maoist party, which launched a decade-long war against the state, has also been attacking some foreign-funded companies.

Concerned over the twin blasts in the Capital just ahead of the planned investment summit, the government on March 12 branded the Chand party a criminal group and banned its activities.

Since then the government has arrested scores of leaders of the party. Though the government has called the Chand party for talks, it has showed no signs of coming to the negotiating table.

Chand was a key leader in the Maoist party during the insurgency, but years after the party joined mainstream politics in 2006, he walked away along with Mohan Baidya and Ram Bahadur Thapa in 2012 to form another Maoist outfit, saying the Maoist party that had launched the war had deviated from its ideology. But after disagreements with Thapa, Chand in 2014 decided to form his own party—Communist Party of Nepal—to launch what he claimed

unified revolution. In 2016, Thapa returned to the parent Maoist party, and now is the home minister.