Kathmandu, Aug 8 (IANS) Less than a week after he hit the headlines for joining politics, Nepal’s former king Gyanendra’s son-in-law Raj Bahadur Singh was arrested by police from a Kathmandu nightclub for drunken and disorderly behaviour.
Singh, a commoner who married Gyanendra’s daughter, Princess Prerana, in 2003, was arrested along with over a dozen companions, including six women, for carousing in Club Platinum, the exclusive night club at the five-star Yak and Yeti hotel, after closing hours.
The former princess, however, was not present in the nightclub.
The former royal son-in-law, who owns the nightclub, did not close it by midnight, as required by the law. Defying requests by police to close it, he kept up the party, banking on his extended family’s clout to keep him above law.
Finally, around 1 a.m. Saturday, police raided the nightclub, arresting Singh, who was shaking a leg with his companions, most of whom were in an inebriated state.
They were taken in police vans handcuffed, like common criminals, to the nearby police station and made to cool their heels for nearly seven hours.
Finally, the group was released around 8 a.m. after they signed a statement saying they would not flout the law again.
Soon after the arrest, police began to receive calls from Singh’s powerful associates, pressuring them to release the former royal son-in-law.
Singh last week joined a fringe party, the Nepali Janata Dal that has two MPs in the 601-member parliament.
During the elections to choose a new prime minister, the Nepali Janata Dal is backing the Maoists, the former guerrilla party that caused Singh’s father-in-law to be deposed and monarchy abolished in Nepal.
Readers have been writing to newspapers, calling it a ploy by Singh to carry on with his business deals unobstructed. During the army-backed absolute reign of Gyanendra, some of his business deals became highly controversial.
Singh tried to muzzle Indian telecom joint venture United Telecom Ltd as well as the state-run Nepal Telecom to get undue advantage for a private mobile telephone company.
He also presented an engineering survey as his company’s own to grab a railway contract that however was terminated by the new government after his father-in-law’s regime collapsed due to nationwide protests.
After his induction into politics became public last week, Singh avoided the media, saying he was indisposed.
In the past, he has also been in the limelight for allegedly assaulting his wife.
(Sudeshna Sarkar can be contacted at sudeshna.s@ians.in)
