Ranjan Koirala, a murder convict who was released on July 23, 2020 after his sentence was commuted by the Supreme Court, has been arrested from Baneshwar in Kathmandu, a day after the top court overturned its earlier verdict.

“We arrested him from a house in Baneshwar,” said Basanta Kunwar, Senior Superintendent of Police of the Kathmandu Valley Crime Investigation Office. “He was out of contact with his cell phone switched off.”

Kunwar said he would be taken to the prison by following due process after government offices reopen on Monday.

Koirala, a former deputy inspector general of the Armed Police Force, was convicted of murdering his wife Gita Dhakal in February 2012.

A full bench of Acting Chief Justice Deepak Kumar Karki and justices Tanka Bahadur Moktan and Kumar Chudal on Thursday quashed the Supreme Court’s earlier verdict issued on June 2020 by a division bench of Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher Rana and justice Tej Bahadur KC that had reduced the life term handed down to Koirala to eight years and six months.

Koirala was released on July 23, 2020 after the division bench of Rana and KC said on June 29 that he could be released after serving eight years and six months in jail arguing that the life imprisonment was too harsh, as the incident seemed accidental.

The verdict by the Rana-led bench caused controversy, prompting the Supreme Court to go for a review.

Now with the full bench quashing the previous verdict, Koirala will have to serve his remaining 11 and a half years of life sentence for the cold-blooded murder of his wife.