Human rights activists organised under the banner of Mahila Adhikar Manch have withdrawn their protest, after sealing an agreement with the Ministry of Home Affairs on Tuesday.

Fourteen activists, who had been continuously staging sit-ins since August 9, reached the agreement on the 82nd day of the protest after the ministry agreed to write to the Banke police to move ahead with the murder after abduction case against Nepali Congress leader Badshah Kurmi. Along with filing the case against Badshah, the government has also agreed to write to the Nepal Police Headquarters and the District Police Office, Banke, to ensure the safety of the protesters and their families.

“We have withdrawn our protest with the agreement. However, we are still doubtful because several of the past agreements remain unimplemented,” Ruby Khan, chief of the Manch, told the Post. “We are not going to rest until the guilty is booked.”

The activists, who travelled all the way to Kathmandu from Nepalgunj, had started the protest demanding the removal of Kurmi as a minister and a criminal case be filed against him.

The protesters have demanded Badshah’s immediate removal as a minister from the Lumbini provincial government.

Congress leader and Provincial Assembly member in Lumbini, Badshah is the prime accused in Nirmala Kurmi’s disappearance and capture of her property. Nirmala, a resident of Banke district, disappeared mysteriously in 2010 and remains missing. Though he stepped down as a minister for forest and environment in Lumbini on September 10, the Banke Police remains reluctant to register a case against him.

For close to three months, Khan and her fellow protesters walked barefoot from Kalanki to Maitighar before commencing their sit-in and returning in the same manner. The government held dialogue only on Tuesday. Dil Bahadur Tamang, an undersecretary at the ministry, signed the agreement with the government.

This is the fifth agreement between the government and Manch in the past three years.

They first started protesting in October 2021 as a group of 14 people, including 11 women, who arrived in Kathmandu from Nepalgunj, covering over 500 kilometres on foot in the quest for justice for two women victims of murder and disappearances. They had to march to Kathmandu after the local administration paid no attention to their protest.

After 12 days of sit-ins and a hunger strike, the government had agreed to investigate the murder of Nakunni Dhobi and disappearance of Nirmala Kurmi. Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba was the prime minister at the time.

Ignoring the agreement his party had signed with Khan, the Congress fielded Badshah in the provincial assembly elections in November 2023. He won.

One-and-a-half years later, on July 23, the country’s biggest party made him a minister in the province, rewarding him instead of prosecuting him with a clear refusal to implement the past agreements. The Ministry of Home Affairs, currently led by Ramesh Lekhak of the party, has sealed two agreements with Khan: the first in January 2022 and the next on June 25.

After around three weeks of protest, the Pushpa Kamal Dahal-led government had reached a five-point deal with Khan in the last week of June. This included completing the investigation of Nirmala’s disappearance without delay.

Based on the agreement in October 2021, the government had formed a committee led by Hira Lal Regmi, then a joint-secretary at the home ministry.

The committee, in its report submitted to erstwhile minister for home affairs Bal Krishna Khand, had recommended the arrest of, and investigation into, eight people for their alleged involvement in Nirmala’s disappearance.

The police arrested seven, who were later released, but they never arrested Badshah. Badshah was also a Constituent Assembly member and is an influential Congress leader in Banke.

With the government’s reluctance to implement the Regmi panel’s recommendations, Khan, accompanied by 15 others, walked to Kathmandu on foot from Banke and started the sit-in in the Capital on November 25, 2021. They withdrew their protest on the 42nd day, after the government agreed to get the Central Investigation Bureau of Nepal Police to investigate Kurmi’s disappearance, implement the home ministry’s probe report and provide security to the protesters.

Nirmala, 52, had gone missing in January 2010 from Janaki Rural Municipality in Banke. Her disappearance came to light two years after her two teenage sons were murdered in the span of a week. Khan has been demanding Badshah’s arrest.