KATHMANDU, Nepal — June 2 – Nepal’s crown prince shot dead the king and queen of this Himalayan kingdom and several other relatives during a family dinner at the royal palace here Friday, in an apparent dispute over his choice of bride, a senior military official said.
The prince gunned down six other family members before killing himself. King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya and nine other people were killed when Crown Prince Dipendra opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon during the family’s regular Friday dinner at the Narayan Hity Palace, they said.
Nepal’s crown prince Dipendra opened fire in the royal palace of this small Himalayan nation on Friday, shooting to death his parents — the king and queen — in an apparent dispute over his choice of bride, a senior military official said. The prince gunned down six other family members before killing himself.
A look at the king, queen, prince and princess of Nepal who were killed, the crown prince who shot them to death, and the prince expected to take the throne:
- CROWN PRINCE DIPENDRA, 29. Educated at Britain’s Eton College, he was heir to the throne.
- KING BIRENDRA, 55. Was crowned king in 1972 to replace his late father, King Mahrendra. He was the latest monarch in the Shah dynasty, which has held the throne since the mid-1700s. Birendra, who was Harvard-educated, held nearly absolute power until 1990. A parliamentary government was then established, and the king had remained a figurehead.
- QUEEN AISWARYA, 51. Educated at home, she later received a Bachelor of Arts degree. Played a signifcant role in the advancement of women and won worldwide praise for work to aid children,
- PRINCE NIRAJAN, 22, the younger brother of the crown prince.
- PRINCESS SHRUTI, 24, the princess is married and has two daughters.
- PRINCE GYANENDRA, the king’s younger brother, next in line to the throne, was expected to succeed King Birendra.
Nepal at a Glance
Facts about Nepal, a Himalayan nation in South Asia where at least five members of the royal family were killed in what the military said was a murder suicide:
GEOGRAPHY: A landlocked kingdom, home to Mt. Everest, that straddles the Himalayas between northern India and China. It rises steeply from the Ganges River Basin in India and contains high fertile valleys. About the size of Arkansas. Home to eight of the world’s 14 highest peaks.
PEOPLE: 21 million, about 90 percent Hindu and 5 percent Buddhist.
GOVERNMENT: Constitutional monarchy under now-slain King Birendra. Current government, the fourth since 1996, is led by Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala. He is under pressure from Communists and other opposition parties to resign since one of his Cabinet members was named in a bribery scandal involving the lease of an aircraft for state-owned Royal Nepal Airlines.
ECONOMY: One of the world’s poorest countries, more than 80 percent dependent on agriculture. Per capita annual income is $213.
HISTORY: Secretive and closed nation ruled by an 18th-century dynasty, but governed until 1950 by a line of powerful prime ministers from an aristocratic and inbred family, the Ranas. After a brief experiment with democracy in 1959, political parties were disbanded. In 1990, dozens of pro-democracy demonstrators were shot by police, prompting a surge of anti-royal sentiment that forced King Birendra to yield most of his authority to an elected government.
Nepal: Poor, Struggling to Catch Up
One of Nepal’s many prime ministers in a decade of democracy once wrote a satirical novel called “The 12th Man,” a story written from the perspective of the player on the bench desperately waiting to get out on the soccer field.
Lokendra Bahadur Chand could have been describing his homeland. Cut off from the world until it opened its borders in 1950, Nepal has never quite caught up with the other players.
Thousands of trekkers and mountain climbers come every year to marvel at its soaring peaks, its quaint stone and wood villages, its forests of pine and rhododendron. “Pristine poverty,” cynics call it.
Nothing — tourism, economic liberalization, elected governments, hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid — has been able to lift this country from medieval penury. Ninety percent of its people still scratch out a subsistence from the rocky, mountainous countryside.
Nepal has only 8,000 miles of roads. In most of the country, supplies are carried in wicker baskets on the backs of men and women over steep, narrow footpaths.
Barely any of Nepal has electricity. Drinking water is scarce and fewer than one Nepali in five has a toilet.
The 1990 uprising that forced King Birendra to relinquish absolute power raised public expectations of a quick end to their feudalistic existence.
But except for raucous politics and an unshackled press, not much has changed. Fewer than one adult in three knows how to read. The United Nations Children’s Fund says two-thirds of children are stunted by malnutrition.
In the capital, Katmandu, foreign products are abundant and cars choke the narrow streets. But modernity stops at the hills ringing the Katmandu Valley — Nepal’s per capita income of just a couple hundred dollars a year is among the lowest in the world.
Democracy has brought political instability, with frequent changes of government. Chand, for instance, was in power for only a few months three years ago.
