A petition has been registered at the Supreme Court on Sunday demanding the prosecution of Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the then Maoist supreme commander, and former prime minister Baburam Bhattarai, the then second-in-command of the Maoist party.

Nine former child combatants led by Lenin Bista, the founding chair of the Discharged People’s Liberation Army, registered the petition stating that they were forced by Maoists to be part of military activities against the laws of international human rights. The petitioners have claimed that the Maoist leaders had committed war crimes by recruiting minors in the armed conflict.

The court will conduct a preliminary hearing on the case on Tuesday.

Revoking previous week’s decision of the apex court administration to scrap a writ petition of former child Maoist combatants, a single bench of Justice Anand Mohan Bhattarai on Friday ordered the court staffers to register the petition that demands the prosecution of Dahal and Bhattarai.

The court administration on May 30 had refused to register the petition arguing that the case will be settled through the transitional justice mechanisms that are overseeing conflict-era cases.

During the verification process for army integration conducted by UNMIN in 2007, thousands of Maoist fighters, including Bista, had been disqualified for being minors.

Among the 4,008 combatants who did not qualify for integration, 2,973 were verified as minors while the remaining 1,035 had joined the Maoist ‘People’s Liberation Army’ after the first ceasefire of May 26, 2006 — six months before the peace deal was signed.

The government had provided between Rs500,000 and Rs800,000 each to the combatants who chose voluntary retirement. However, those disqualified didn’t get any substantial support, except for a few thousand rupees from the United Nations.