A team from Kavre District Police and Metropolitan Police arrested nine members, including some senior leaders, of the Netra Bikram Chand-led Communist Party of Nepal from Kavre on Saturday morning.

According to police, two senior leaders of the party—Hemanta Prakash Oli ‘Sudarshan’ and Bijay Shrestha ‘Prajwalan’—were among the arrestees.

Oli is in-charge of the mid-central command of the party while Shrestha is the party’s “army bureau chief”. Shankar Adhikari, Lalit Tamang, Sanjiv Karki, Dev Ghimire, Lokendra Khadka and Dharmaraj Rajbahak are other Chand party members who were arrested.

Oli, one of the five members in Chand’s high command, had escaped on Tuesday when police had reached Kafal Danda of Roshi Rural Municipality in Kavre district following a tip-off about the party’s hideout.

Police had then arrested two cadres—Shiba Dhimal and Bishal Tamang—after exchanging fire.

Oli is also said to have been a key person behind the blasts at Nakkhu and Basundhara in the Capital. The blast at Nakkhu on February 22 had claimed one human life and injured two others. There was no human casualty in the blast at Basundhara on March 8.

“We had intensified search for Oli after he managed to flee on Tuesday. After the escape, we received some information following which we were monitoring the activities of some cadres,” Superintendent of Police Rabiraj Khadka, chief of Kavre District Police, told the Post.

“When we came to know about their plan to leave Kavre, we deployed one of our teams on the route, while another group of security personnel followed them,” said Khadka. “When they reached the site where our team was waiting, we stopped their vehicle and arrested them.”

Dharmaraj, along with two others, had come to Kavre on Friday in a rented Scorpio jeep (Baa 17 Pa 4793) to pick other members. The group was planning to leave Kavre when the police intercepted and arrested the group.

“A pistol, some detonators and explosives have been seized from the group,” added Khadka.

On March 15, the Metropolitan Crime Division had arrested Mohan Karki ‘Jiwanta’, a politburo member of Chand party from Lalitpur.

After the government decision to brand the Chand party a criminal outfit and crack down on its activities on March 12, police have swung into action against the Chand group.

According to Nepal Police, more than 100 cadres of the Chand outfit have been arrested across the country in the last month.

“Those involved in activities against the law of the country are being arrested. Similarly, some other individuals involved in recent explosions in the Valley are also being searched for,” Senior Superintendent of Police Uttam Raj Subedi, spokesperson of Nepal Police, told the Post.

However, experts and analysts have said that there is no specific law to control the criminal and destructive activities of an outfit and that the decision to ban the Chand outfit was made on the basis of assumptions rather than objective assessments.

Nagendra Adhikari contributed reporting