Laxmi Badu, a ninth grader at the local Saraswati Higher Second­ary School, has been repeating the same thing again and again to every prying journalist. A classmate of Nirmala Pant, whose half-naked dead body was found in a sugarcane field in Bhimdatta municipality of far-western Nepal on July 26, Badu says she is still “deathly scared” while passing through the sugarcane field en route to school. These days Badu walks that road only in the company of her little brother. “I used to walk fearlessly, but no more,” she says.

Manisha, the elder sister of Nirma­la, says she does not feel like study­ing any more. “I had never heard of something so horrific. It has affected me deeply,” she says.

“Whether I am eating or doing my homework, I cannot stop thinking about Nirmala and what happened to her,” she adds. “I still cannot sleep at night.”

The three Pant sisters were sepa­rated by two years each. The eldest, Manisha, is 15, Nirmala was 13, and the youngest, Saraswati, is just 11. As their parents are now in Kath­mandu to lobby for quick resolution of the case and punishment for the culprits, the two remaining sisters are now under the case of their step-mother, Laxmi.

“They have taken it hard. The three sisters were inseparable,” Laxmi says.

Parwati Nath, an eleventh grader at the Siddanath Amar Higher Secondary School, is also petrified of venturing out alone. “I used to freely roam about with­out a worry, but after hearing of repeated incidents of rapes and murders of women and girls, I am really scared,” she says.

It is not just the school-going girls who are under stress. Their parents are as worried. “After what hap­pened to Nirmala the whole climate is steeped in fear,” says Dhanan­jaya Joshi, a teacher at Siddanath. “Parents are now having second thought about sending their wards to school.” He says he too is worried whenever his children are out.

“Many students now refuse to come to school,” says Jagannath Pandey of Saraswa­ti School, Nirmala’s alma mater. “My reading is that they will continue to be fearful unless Nirmala’s murderers are apprehend­ed and punished.”

In fact, most of the local students who have to cross the sugarcane field near the local Nimbukheda Riv­er en route have stopped coming to school. “We were supposed to take new admissions for Grade XI but after the Nirmala incident no new student has come,” Pandey says.

In the words of Puhspa Chand of Bhimdatta-6, also a teacher at Siddhanath School, and a parent of two, “children fear what hap­pened to Nirmala may next happen to them.”

It is not reassuring that since Nir­mala’s rape and murder, other sim­ilar cases have come to light in Kan­chanpur. For instance one Rajendra Bista of Beldandi rural municipality was apprehended on Sept 15 on charge of raping two minors. In yet another disturbing incidence, a father was sent to prison for raping his 12-year-old daughter.

“Instead of going down, the number of these disturbing crim­inal activities is increasing,” says Punam Singh Chand, an advocate and human rights activist. “The state should be more responsible. That said only collectively can we fight this scourge”