This is what 47-year-old Durga Thapa Magar feels. The 47-year-old was one
among 75 persons, who were injured when a bus was caught in a Maoist-laid ambush
in Bandarmude village on June 6, 2005. The ambush, the bloodiest incident
targeting civilians since the Maoists waged an armed rebellion against the state
in 1996, had claimed 35 civilians and three armymen.

Oblivious of woes of the survivors and family members of the victims,
Shaktikhor PLA cantonment in Chitwan, which is 60 km from the ambush site, was
celebrating the 14th anniversary of the ‘People’s War’ last week.

Three-and-a-half-years after the ambush, Prime Minister and Chairman of
Unified Maoist Pushpa Kamal Dahal announced relief packages. But the package for
survivors and family members of the victims was missing. In the incident, 11
people from Ayodhayapur were injured while 18 lost their lives.

In October 2006, when the Maoists were preparing to join the government,
Dahal admitted that the Bandarmude incident had been a mistake and said the
victims’ demands would be met within one-and-a-half months after their party
joined the government.

The victims’ demands include naming the guilty and prosecuting them,
compensating the survivors and declaring the dead martyrs.

While in the interim government, the only mention the CPN (Maoist) made of
the Bandarmude incident was in June 2007, when Dahal expressed sadness for not
being able to distribute already-prepared relief packages to the Bandarmude
victims.

The victims and survivors did not figure in the list floated by the Maoist
party in December 2008 that proposed declaring around 10,000 Nepalis killed
during the insurgency martyrs.

Prime Minister’s Jan. 24 address to the nation also offered nothing for
Bandarmude victims and victims of other such incidents.

Madi victim Krishna Adhikary says, “In October 2006, Dahal proposed to build
a monument for the Bandarmude victims. We refused and instead built it with the
support of Nepal Army,” said Adhikary.

However, a central committee member of the Maoist party, Devendra Poudel, who
was responsible for investigating the Madi incident, said the party had provided
support to some of the victims. “We also suspended four of those involved as per
the victims’ demand. The party is serious about providing relief to them through
the government,” he said.

For Bandarmude victims, such assurances do not count. “There is impunity, and
with the Maoists in the government, we don’t feel we will get justice,” says
Adhikary. What is worrisome for Adhikary is the fact that other parties are not
standing for the victims.

Back in the life of Durga Thapa Magar. She has spent Rs. 200,000 for
treatment, but all that she got from NGOs was a measly Rs. 18,000. She is still
borrowing to pay her monthly medical bill of Rs 4,000.

Giving up the land that she had rented for tilling was far worse. “My life
was bad before, but I could at least toil in others’ fields to make it better.
The blast didn’t just break my back; it killed my spirit.”

Only in recent months has the mother of four recovered enough to walk and
help her husband. Even as victims’ call for justice and action against the
guilty continue to be a cry in the wilderness, all that survivors like Durga can
do is wait for justice and hope the guilty will be brought to book one
day.