Kathmandu, May 18: Nepal’s judiciary has suffered a major setback after the arson and vandalism of Bhadra 24, with damages exceeding Rs 2.89 billion and serious disruption to its five-year strategic reform plan.
A 95-page report prepared by the Supreme Court’s crisis management task force, led by Justice Tek Prasad Dhungana, says the attacks on September 24 and 25 severely undermined the judiciary’s targets, especially efforts to modernize services and clear case backlogs. The panel was formed to study the fire, looting, and destruction that struck courts across the country.
The report says 23 courts, including Supreme Court of Nepal, were damaged in the violence. Court buildings, case files, digital systems, vehicles, furniture, and service infrastructure were either destroyed or looted, leaving judicial services badly crippled.
One of the judiciary’s core goals under its fifth strategic plan was to eliminate all cases older than two years at the Supreme Court and clear long-pending cases in district and high courts within set deadlines. The report says the September violence has made those targets nearly impossible to achieve.
It notes that before the attacks, the judiciary had made notable progress in physical infrastructure and technology-driven services. Nepal’s courts were among the leading public institutions in adopting digital systems. But the destruction wiped out much of the Supreme Court’s IT infrastructure, directly affecting virtual hearings, online case registration, decision writing, compensation-related justice delivery, and judicial training programs.
The task force warns that not only the 23 damaged courts but also the wider court system faced service paralysis because of the loss of interconnected digital systems. Restoring regular operations will require immediate, medium-term, and long-term measures, along with significant new resources.
People’s News Monitoring Service
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