Police have arrested a suspect of the Rautahat brick kiln massacre in which at least two persons were allegedly burnt alive and many others were injured 13 years ago.

Badri Sahani, a resident of Simraungadh Municipality-4 in Bara district, was arrested from Bankul in Rautahat near the Nepal-India border on Friday evening. Preparations are underway to present him before the Rautahat District Court on Sunday, said police.

“Sahani, 55, went into hiding after the bomb blast in Fradahawa, Rajpur, in 2008. A team from the Provincial Police Office in Janakpur detained him from Baudhimai Municipality-7. Search is on to arrest seven other suspects of the massacre,” said Deputy Inspector General Dhiraj Pratap Singh, head of the provincial police. Acting on a tip-off, police arrested Sahani as he entered Nepal from India, according to Singh.

Issuing a press release on Saturday, Province 2 Provincial Police Office said Sahani is one of 11 suspects involved in the incident in which two to three people were killed and 15-16 injured. According to DIG Singh, it was earlier suspected that many people were killed in the incident but only two deaths have been confirmed so far. 

Police had arrested Nepali Congress leader Mohammad Aftab Alam in October 2019 for his involvement in the blast. The charges of attempted murder and holding and transporting explosive materials have been registered against 11 people involved in the Rautahat brick kiln massacre. The suspects also face the charges of burning injured people alive in a brick kiln to destroy evidence. Alam, who was elected to the federal parliament from Rautahat-2 in the 2017 elections, is in judicial custody in Nakkhu jail.

According to police, Sahani was the head technician at the kiln when the incident took place. He was accused of burning people that were killed and injured in the blast as per the instruction of Alam. DIG Singh said that Sahani has admitted to his involvement in the crime.

Besides Alam, police have also arrested two other suspects of the incident. Sheikh Seraj and Mukti Sah were arrested by police a few months ago. Seraj has been taken in custody while the court released Sah on bail.

The 2008 blast took place in the shed belonging to Sheikh Idris, Alam’s uncle, on the previous day of the elections of Constituent Assembly-I. Police had filed a charge sheet claiming that Alam and his men had thrown Trilok Pratap Singh and Osi Akhtar into the kiln’s furnace after the blast.

Trilok’s father Shrinarayan Singh and Akhtar’s mother Roksana Khatun had lodged complaints against Alam and his accomplices after the explosion. Alam and three others had been arrested a few months after the explosion but they were released later. An unidentified group gunned down Khatun in 2011.

The story has been updated to add the fourth paragraph.