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Two persons died and 44 others were injured in a tractor accident at Dumkata in Chainpur Municipality-10, Sankhuwasabha district on Friday.

DSP Laldhoj Subedi of the District Police Office said that the deceased have been identified as Keshav Karki and Ganga Bahadur Tamang.

Among the injured, one is said to be in critical condition.

Police said that the injured are being treated at the Manakamana Community Hospital and the District Hospital.

According to police, they have arrested tractor (Ko 2 Ta 3961) driver Mohan Kumar Tamang (34) of Chainpur-10 for investigation.

The weather across the nation would remain partly to generally cloudy as well as well as there is a possibility of rainfall with thunderstorm and lightning at some places today.

According to the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, light to moderate rainfall with thunderstorm and lightning is likely to take place at some places of Province 1, Bagmati, Gandaki, Karnali and Sudurpaschim Provinces and few places of the remaining provinces due to influence of the Monsoon wind.

The sky of province 1, Bagmati, Gandaki, Karnali and Sudurpaschim Provinces has now remained generally cloudy. Similarly, the weather of the remaining provinces is partly to generally cloudy and rainfall with thunderstorm and lightning is now taking places at few places of these provinces.

Light to moderate rainfall along with thunderstorm and lightning has been predicted across the country while there is a possibility of heavy rain at one or two places of province 1 and Madhes Province as well as few places of the remaining provinces in the night.

The weather in Gandaki, Lumbini, Karnali and Sudurpaschim Provinces will remain generally to fully cloudy and partly to generally cloudy at the remaining provinces on Saturday.

According to the Department, many places of Bagmati, Gandaki, Lumbini, Karnali and Sudurpaschim Provinces will witness light to moderate rainfall with thunderstorm and lightning as well as few places of the remaining provinces.

Likewise, Heavy rainfall has been forecast at one or two places of province 1 and Bagmati province as well as few places of Gandaki, Lumbini, Karnali and Sudurpaschim Provinces.

Most of us have a pet or two at home. They are our friends, an extension of our families. We might forget to take them out sometimes and they may soil our carpets but we still love them, and they us. But when we bring in pets on a whim or consider them status symbols or guards, we blur the line between compassion and cruelty. 

Recently, animal shelters have rescued many abandoned dogs from the streets. They are often in a bad state—dehydrated, unable to stand or walk, blind, suffering from different skin issues, etc. Some are beyond saving. 

What generally happens, say activists, is people bring in a dog for a purpose—to placate their children, to scare away intruders, or to keep up with that neighbor who got an expensive purebred. The novelty wears off pretty quickly. “Puppies get bigger and aren’t ‘cute’ anymore, or people discover that the dog has needs, that it needs to be fed, groomed, and occasionally taken to the vet,” says Shristi Singh Shrestha, an animal rights activist. And what follows is utter inhumanity: They are left on the streets. People take them for a walk and leave them tied to a tree or a pole, or they are put in cars and dropped somewhere far off so that they can’t find their way back home.

“Pedigree dogs are all the rage. Everybody wants a fancy, good-looking dog. But they don’t understand what it means to have a pet at home,” says Shristi. Every dog has a personality and will grow and adapt to its surroundings differently. Besides having specific feeding and grooming needs, how a dog turns out largely depends on how it’s raised. Many dog owners keep their pets chained or caged. They beat the animals to ‘train or discipline’ them which in turn make them aggressive and lead to behavioral issues. Then, as seen in Kathmandu, their owners get rid of them. 

Animal Nepal, a non-profit animal welfare organization, rescued seven pet dogs in the past month. This is not counting the dogs that have died on the streets or been abandoned in forests where they have been attacked by wild animals. Sushant Acharya, veterinary technician who is a part of the Mobile Rescue Team at Animal Nepal, says they had been rescuing at least a couple of pet dogs a month for a while now but the number has gone up recently. Earlier it was mostly German Shepherds on the streets but now they find Boxers, Pugs, Huskies and Labradors too.

Sneha Shrestha, founder of Sneha’s Care, a non-profit animal rescue organization, says when you bring a dog home, you must understand it’s a lifelong commitment. A dog isn’t a toy, she says, not something you can outgrow and toss out. Sneha’s Care gets many emails and messages requesting the shelter to ‘adopt’ their dogs as the family is migrating abroad or their dog bit someone and they are now scared of it. Despite Sneha’s team trying to convince people that they are responsible for their pets, most of these dogs invariably end up on the streets. “I believe, more than ever, that there’s no humanity. Everything is a matter of convenience, even an innocent being’s life,” says Sneha. 

Ananda Dahal, chairman, Nepal Animal Welfare and Research Center, says abandoning pets when they become aggressive, ill or old is classic apathetic behavior. It is no surprise to him because humans always put themselves first. We consider ourselves superior and our lives more valuable. Everything else is disposable. Dahal says people routinely abuse street dogs and get away without even a warning. Instead, the police have declared that dogs are a nuisance, a threat to the community. “Our system fuels animal cruelty by devaluing other forms of life,” he says. Abandoning pets, he says, is perhaps the highest form of animal cruelty. 

Pet dogs aren’t street-smart. They aren’t able to take care of themselves—they can’t scavenge for food and they don’t know what to do on the roads. They usually get run over by vehicles. The problem isn’t lack of awareness. The sad reality is people know what will happen to their abandoned pets but they don’t care. As there are no repercussions for their actions—their dogs cannot be traced back to them—it has become convenient to get rid of unwanted pets. This is why registration, some sort of taxation, and microchipping pets is important, says Shristi.

Leaving pets on the streets is an escalating problem but not a difficult one to solve, say activists. The key lies in making it tricky to bring a pet home. Right now, anybody can just walk into a pet shop and buy a dog they want. If pets had to be registered at the ward office, people would think twice and only those who are absolutely sure they want one would go through the hassle. 

Microchipping would prevent pets from being lost and if someone were to abandon theirs, the dog could be traced back to the owner and punishment meted out. Currently, the Animal Welfare Law provides for up to three months’ jail-time for those found guilty of animal-cruelty. But there is no way of proving who an abandoned dog belongs to. 

Raina Byanjankar, founder of Oxsa Nepal Animal Welfare Society, says keeping pets has become more about showing off than about their companionship. People see Golden Retrievers and Labradors in ads and social media, and celebrities carrying tiny dogs in their purses, and they want that. We saw dire wolves—Ghost, Summer and Nymeria among others—protecting the Stark family in the ‘Game of Thrones’ which aired for eight years. Ghost was an Arctic wolf while Summer and the others were a crossbreed of Siberian Huskies, Samoyeds, and other northern breeds. Following global trends, in Nepal too everyone now wanted a Siberian Husky aka their own dire wolf. 

Though Siberian Huskies are known as hardy and adaptable dogs, they thrive in colder climates. Extreme heat can be discomfiting and lead to skin and other health problems. It’s the same with other breeds of dogs being reared for commercial purposes at various pet shops, clinics, and breeding centers. Meanwhile, Nepali dogs, which are some of the world’s oldest breeds, have strong immune systems and live for up to 20 years. These dogs are acclimatized to our climate as well. 

“But they aren’t trendy enough for most Nepalis,” says Byanjankar. The result is an unethical breeding industry that practices and promotes animal cruelty. Recently, actor Priyanka Karki put up a bunch of Siberian Husky puppies for sale, drawing flak from animal lovers and activists who fear her action would endorse breeding. “It’s also necessary to control dog breeding in Nepal. We simply don’t need European or American breeds,” says Raina. 

To create awareness about adopting local dogs and not buying pets, Animal Nepal in collaboration with The Jane Goodall Institute Nepal is celebrating July as the National Month of Dogs. Eventually, they hope to put this on the calendar. “It’s all about being compassionate towards animals. We must start at our homes by taking full responsibility for our pets. The best practice would be to adopt dogs from animal shelters instead of buying them from breeding centers,” says Shristi. “If you love dogs and want a pet, why does it have to be an expensive one?” 

On June 19, the Special Court cleared former minister Bikram Pandey and 20 others of the charge of misappropriating more than Rs 2 billion from the Sikta Irrigation Project.

Earlier that month, the same court had exonerated Raj Kumar Rauniyar, former vice-chancellor at Dharan’s BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, in a bribery case. He was caught in his own office with Rs 800,000 in unaccounted for cash.

Similarly, on May 30, the court had given a clean chit to Surendra Bahadur Thapa, assistant attorney at Pokhara-based Public Prosecutor’s Office, on charges of bribery and amassing illegal wealth.

The above verdicts are cases in point of how the Special Court has been acquitting politicians and senior bureaucrats implicated in high-profile bribery and corruption cases.

This trend reportedly started after Srikanta Poudel was appointed the court’s chair along with Ramesh Kumar Pokharel, Yamuna Bhattarai, Shaligram Koirala, Balbhadra Banstola and Khusi Prasad Tharu as members, back in February.

The Thapa-led team started looking into the cases from March 7 and since then, they have passed down 216 not-guilty verdicts against 24 guilty ones.

In the Nepali month of Chaitra (mid-March to mid-April), they ruled on 44 cases, issuing 38 acquittals and eight convictions. The month prior, the bench handed down 36 acquittals and six guilty rulings.

Advocate Srihari Aryal says while there are plenty of malpractices in the judiciary, the high acquittal rate in corruption cases is mainly the result of insubstantial evidence.

“I’m not claiming that our judiciary is free of corruption. In fact, I was part of the team that prepared a report to expose corruption and malpractice in our courts. But in these cases, it is the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority that should be answerable,” he says. “When 90 percent of the registered cases are getting thrown out, shouldn’t the commission, which registered the cases, review its work?”

Aryal adds this is what happens when political appointees run the CIAA. Chargesheets for a high-profile corruption case are filed with weak evidence and the court cannot establish the crime. This isn’t the case when it comes to petty corruption and fraud cases though. Ever since Thapa and his team joined the Special Court, they have issued convictions only in cases related to fake documents. Not only that, the team seems eager to swiftly settle corruption-related cases. On a single day, June 2, for instance, the court issued acquittals on 17 bribery and corruption cases.

Chairperson of Transparency International Nepal Padmini Pradhananga says political appointment of judges is also the reason why corruption in Nepal is entrenched.

“There are reports of corruption and malpractice in the judiciary, but no one is investigating. Corrupt people will continue to escape punishment so long as judges and justices are seen as above the law,” she says.