The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the defendants including the Office of the President to submit a written response within seven days giving the reason for releasing gangster Yog Raj Dhakal aka Regal.

Responding to a writ petition by Bharati Manandhar, the widow of Chetan Manandhar of Banke, a single bench of Justice Manoj Kumar Sharma issued the show-cause notice to the defendants and also passed an order to arrange the security for the victim’s family.

Manandhar had filed the petition at the apex court demanding the court annul the presidential pardon for Regal convicted of murdering her husband.

The Office of the President, the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Home Affairs and Banke District Administration Office among others have been named defendants in the case.

Manandhar also started a hunger strike at Maitighar in Kathmandu on Wednesday.

Chetan was murdered by a gang led by Regal at a hotel in Nepalgunj on July 13, 2015. A single bench of Banke District Court judge Bishnu Subedi on April 24, 2018, convicted Regal as the mastermind of the murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment along with the confiscation of his property.

Likewise, Chhabilal Basnet, Premadhwaj Khatri aka Prashant, Mohanlal Khadka and Nawaraj Khatri got life imprisonment, Sohan Singh Dhakal got 10 years, Dipendra Malla was sentenced to five years and Hari Oli, Yam Bahadur Budha Magar, Manish Chaulagain, Bibad Pathak, Keshav Rokaya, Madhav Pariyar, Pritam Thapa got three years each in jail.

President Ramchandra Paudel on September 19 pardoned 670 convicts including Regal as per the government’s recommendation on the occasion of Constitution Day.

There is a practice of pardoning inmates and convicts by the head of state, on the Cabinet's recommendation, on Republic Day, Constitution Day and during Dashain.

However, such decisions have often courted controversy, time and again. The pardon granted by the then President Bidya Devi Bhandari in 2018 to Bal Krishna Dhungel, a murder convict, was widely criticised too. Similarly, President Paudel’s move to grant pardon to Resham Chaudhary, a convict in the 2015 Tikapur killings, in May, too courted controversy.