A teenager was killed by then Royal Army Officers after torture and rape during the Maoist insurgency, the United Nations said.

The 16-year-old girl identified as RR was arrested by a squad of 20 army personnel from her house at Pokhari Chauri in Kavrepalanchowk district on February 13, 2004, accusing her of being a Maoist.

The secondary school student was taken into control on the day when many Maoists gathered to celebrate the eighth anniversary of the start of the “people’s war.”

Issuing a statement on Monday, the Office of the UN Human Rights Council said although RR had attended the compulsory Maoist Student Union at school, she was not involved in any other Maoist activity.

She denied the soldiers’ accusation, but was taken outside of the house, interrogated, hit with a rifle butt, thrown against a wall and taken to a cornfield, the statement said. A soldier was heard telling another soldier to kill RR, according to the statement.

An investigation carried out by the UN Human Rights Committee says RR’s body was discovered the next morning, with her salwar (trousers) pulled down to the mid-thigh. Her blouse had been lifted up to her neck, and there were scratches on her breasts. “She was shot in the eye, the head and the chest. The army killed two more people in the village that night,” the study found.

The committee issued the finding after considering a complaint filed by the victim’s parents, who found their daughter’s body in a cornfield in their village in 2004.

“The committee found that Nepal was responsible for the direct and arbitrary deprivation of RR’s right to life and for subjecting her to physical and mental torture, including rape,” reads the statement. “The committee also found that RR’s rights not to be subjected to gender discrimination and to be protected as a child had been violated. The committee criticised the lack of an effective remedy for RR’s parents.”

Hélène Tigroudja, a member of the committee, said the gravity of this case has not faded with time even though 18 years have passed.

“This is a particularly severe case in which a child was summarily executed,” she is quoted as saying in the statement. “It also underscores the pattern of abuse and rape of girls during the civil war, the lack of investigation and de facto impunity,”