Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
Claim
Durga Prasain, the commander of the March 28 pro-monarchy protest movement, has been arrested from Birgunj.
Fact
The viral video carries an old photo of Prasain being arrested.
A video claiming that police have arrested Durga Prasain, the commander of the pro-monarchy protest organised in Kathmandu on March 28, has gone viral on TikTok.
The United People’s Movement Committee (JPMC) for the Restoration of Monarchy, led by Navaraj Subedi, had designated medical entrepreneur Prasai as the commander of the movement.
Durga Prasin has been on the run after leading a violent pro-monarchy movement on March 28, while senior vice chairman of Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RRP) Rabindra Mishra and RPP Member of Parliament (MP) Dhawal Sumsher Rana were arrested from Gwarko.
Against this backdrop, TikTok user @nepal24hours posted a video carrying a photo of Durga Prasain being detained by a police officer. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Breaking News: Durga Prasain has been arrested from Birgunj while he was trying to flee to India.”
The video posted on March 30 has garnered 54.9k likes, 2133 users have shared it and 1574 people have commented on the video until the last count.
The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the veracity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker took a key frame from the viral video and ran a Google reverse search on it. The search led us to an article, dated September 22, 2024, posted on setopati online. The article carried an image that exactly matched the viral video. We also noticed that the image carried in the viral video also had a watermark of Setopati online.
On checking the article, we found that the visual shows Prasain being presented to Kathmandu District court seeking his custodial remand for investigation. A team from the Cyber Bureau had arrested Prasai from his residence in Bhaktpur on September 22. We found that the image carried in the viral video is actually from September 2024
We then checked the latest news regarding the status of medical entrepreneur Durga Prasain and found an article published today itself on My Republica online. The article reported that security agencies have found it difficult to arrest Durga Prasain has been absconding since the violent pro-monarchy protest on March 28.
“Despite four police teams searching for him since Friday evening, police have not been able to locate him,” the article read.
Further, we found the most recent article published on Khuburhub online. According to the article, Nepal Police Spokesperson DIG Dinesh Kumar Acharya, at a press meet today, said that they will arrest Durga Prasain soon.
“Durga Prasain is on the run. We are still looking for him. We didn’t arrest him on Friday because his immediate arrest could have further escalated the tension,” the article quoted DIG Acharya as telling the press meet today.
We also reached out to SSP Shekhar Khanal, spokesperson for the Kathmandu Valley Police Office, who confirmed that Prasai has not been arrested yet.
Thus, our findings clearly indicated that Durga Prasain had not been arrested and he is reported to be absconding until the time of publishing this article.
Conclusion
No, Durga Prasain has not been arrested until Wednesday afternoon. An old image of Prasain being detained earlier in September 2024 is going viral with a false claim that he has been arrested.
Result: False
Sources
Khabarhub, April 2, 2025
My Republica , April 2, 2025
Setopati September 22, 2024
Direct contact with SSP Shekhar Khanal.
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
