November 17, 2012 -- The leader of
Nepal's 10-year Maoist insurgency was left shaken on Friday when a former
supporter slapped the ex-guerrilla across the face, smashing his glasses. Police
dragged away 25-year-old Padam Kunwar during the angry confrontation with Maoist
chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal - better known as Prachanda, or the Fierce One - at
a reception in the capital Kathmandu.
"We have arrested him but he is undergoing
treatment at hospital after he was beaten up by Maoist members," police
spokesman Keshav Adhikari said, adding Kunwar would be questioned later. The
attacker, said to be an alienated former party member, grabbed the 57-year-old's
hand and slapped him hard on the cheek, breaking the former revolutionary's
spectacles, during a tea-drinking ceremony.
Kunwar was whisked away by police drenched in
blood after Prachanda's supporters mobbed him and rained blows down onto his
head and face. Barshaman Pun, finance minister in the Maoist-led caretaker
government, described the incident as "very unfortunate" and said it raised
doubts over Prachanda's security. The Maoists waged a revolt against the state
from 1996 until a cease-fire in 2006, during which an estimated 16,000 people
died.
Prachanda's followers swept him to power in
2008 elections and he was briefly prime minister before standing down following
a row over the dismissal of an army chief. Prachanda is Nepal's third senior
politician to be assaulted recently by members of an increasingly frustrated
public who have protested violently against a lack of political progress in the
impoverished Himalayan nation.
In January last year, a 55-year-old man
slapped the chairman of the opposition Unified Marxist Leninist party at an
event for new members. In May, a Kathmandu tea shop owner hit a Maoist lawmaker
across the face, saying the country's political leaders had "betrayed the
people". "We have taken this as an anarchic act. This has given a wrong message.
It has cast doubts over the security of our leaders," Pun told reporters
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