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
Court issues order to arrest Prime Minister Dahal ‘Prachanda’ and former PM Baburam Bhattarai
Fact
The Supreme Court has issued a show cause notice against PM Dahal and ex-PM Bhattarai
A video claiming that the court has issued an arrest warrant against Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and former Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai and two ministers have been arrested from Baluwatar, official residence of Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, in Kathmandu is doing the rounds on TikTok. Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
The claim is being shared against the backdrop of a petition lodged against Prime Minister and Chairman of CPN (Maoist Centre) Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ and National Socialist Party leader Baburam Bhattarai by former child combatants, who were disqualified for integration into Nepal Army earlier in 2007 during United Nations verification process.
Against this backdrop, TikTok user @nirajanpandey1 posted a video showing images of CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman and PM Pushpa Kamal Dahal and National Socialist Party leader and former PM Baburam Bhattarai. Text superimposed on the video reads, “The court has ordered to arrest Prachanda [Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal] and Baburam [NSP leader Bhattarai]. The prime minister likely to resign from the post today itself.” Audio accompanying the video presented in a news bulletin style says, “The court has ordered to arrest PM Dahal and leader Baburam Bhattarai, two ministers have been arrested from Baluwatar. Action against Prime Minister Dahal and leader Bhattarai.” The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
The video shared on June 13 has garnered 6546 likes, 77 users have shared it and 215 people have commented on it until the time of publishing this article.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the authenticity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker looked up news reports regarding Prime Minister Dahal and leader Baburam Bhattarai by using relevant keywords. We found several freshly published news reports regarding the show cause notice issued by the Supreme Court in the name of Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and former Prime Minister and NSP leader Baburam Bhattarai.
We checked a news article titled ‘SC show cause notice to PM Dahal and ex-PM Bhattarai’ published in The Himalayan Times online on June 13. The article stated that a single bench of Justice Sapana Pradhan Malla on Jan 13 asked Dahal, who was the supreme commander of Maoists combatants during the insurgency (1996 to 2006), and Bhattarai, who was Dahal’s deputy during the conflict, to furnish a reply in writing within the next 15 days.
On checking a news article published on The Kathmandu Post online, we found that the Supreme Court has issued a show cause notice against PM Dahal and former PM Bhattarai over the use of children in the Maoist conflict.
Earlier on June 11, nine former child combatants had lodged a petition at the apex court stating that they were forcefully recruited by Maoist leaders to be part of their military activities. The petitioners have argued that the Maoist leaders committed war crimes by recruiting minors in the armed conflict. Responding to the petition.
However, we didn’t find any other reports of the arrest of government ministers from Baluwatar as claimed by the viral video.
Conclusion
The Supreme Court has only issued a show cause notice to PM Dahal and former PM Bhattarai, thus the viral video claiming that the court has ordered to arrest PM Dahal and ex-PM Bhattarai and the arrest of other two government ministers is misleading.
Result: False
Sources
The Himalayan Times online, 13 June, 2023
The Kathmandu Post online, 13 June, 2023
Setopati online, 13 June, 2023
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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.
