An indefinite curfew has been initiated in the Saptari district, which is located a few 280 kilometres southeast of the capital, after the two protesters were shot Saturday night on the East-West Highway, according to The Times of India.
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The Saptari Superintendent of Police Bhim Dhakal said that they were forced to open fire after 2,000 agitating Madhesi Morcha activists started attacking police and escorted vehicles using home-made weapons.
Clashes between the Madhesi ethnic group and the Nepal police grow violent as two protesters were killed while blocking a main highway. Clashes between protesters and police have left almost 50 people dead.
The Madeshi say the new constitution unfairly divides Nepal into seven states with borders that cut through their ancestral homeland. The region has been witnessing demonstrations and protests for the past three months, leading to severe shortages of fuel, drugs and other medicines.
Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup twitted that his government was “distressed at (a) loss of lives in police firing”, and that a political solution was required.
Nepal was limping to normalcy after the devastating April 25 quake but has been hit by the blockade led by Madhesis, who are also demanding proportionate representation in government mechanism, allocation of Parliament seats on the basis of population and re-demarcation of the federal provinces.
Nepal’s Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli has called for a meeting of the main political parties later on Sunday to discuss the protesters’ demands.
“One protester was killed at Bhardaha and another at Rupani”, Dhakal said.
He was hinting towards the incidents of Friday and yesterday when an ambulance was attacked, a sick child and a patient with oxygen cylinder was injured by agitators and setting ablaze a truck carrying medicines during protests in southern Nepal.
Nepal has turned to China for fuel, ending India’s monopoly over the supplies to the landlocked Himalayan nation, and is set to seal its first oil trade deal with Beijing that has pledged to provide the petroleum products at an affordable price. Clash was erupted between the police and cadres after the cadres disturbed the vehicular movement along the east-west highway.
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Demonstrators also set ablaze a motorcycle in Rupni of Saptari this morning.
