Oli’s terror squad returns: Mahesh Basnet’s motorcycle mob breaks bones in Dhangadhi

KATHMANDU: Today the mask came off completely. Forty to fifty motorcycle-riding thugs loyal to CPN-UML strongman Mahesh Basnet swooped down on a small, peaceful Gen-Z protest in Dhangadhi’s Traffic Chowk and carried out a planned, brutal assault that left at least one demonstrator with a broken arm and many others bleeding and traumatised. The attackers arrived waving UML flags, shouting slogans in praise of KP Sharma Oli and Mahesh Basnet, and then set upon unarmed youths who were doing nothing more than holding placards demanding justice.

Police confirmed that one protester suffered a fractured hand; eyewitnesses say the toll is far higher. Young men and women were punched, kicked, and beaten with helmets and iron rods for the crime of remembering the 76 Gen-Z activists who were gunned down exactly two months ago on Bhadra 23. The message from Oli’s party could not be clearer: dare to speak, and we will break you again.

This is the same Mahesh Basnet, once the feared chief of UML’s Youth Association, who has long been accused of running private thugs of criminals masquerading as party cadres. Wherever Basnet appears these days, violence follows like a shadow. Today his “toli” proved once more that they answer to no law, only to the man they still call “Basnet dai” and the ageing chairman they shield with their fists.

Go back just two and half months. On Bhadra 23, Nepal witnessed the darkest single day of state repression since the Panchayat era. 76 young Gen-Z protesters were shot dead in cold blood across Kathmandu, Biratnagar, Pokhara and Nepalgunj. Live rounds, fired on direct orders from a Home Ministry controlled by Oli’s coalition partners Nepali Congress Party, tore through chests and skulls of teenagers and twenty-somethings whose only weapons were phones and slogans. The official death toll was suppressed, the bodies hurried away, the crime scenes scrubbed. Not one senior police officer has been suspended. Not one shooter has been named, let alone prosecuted.

That massacre was meant to teach Nepal’s youth a permanent lesson: stay silent or die. Instead, it created an unquenchable fire. Today in Dhangadhi, a handful of survivors and their friends gathered quietly to remind the country that the blood of Bhadra 23 has still not been avenged. Their placards read simple truths: “76 martyrs, zero justice” and “Punish the killers of Bhadra 23”.

Oli and Basnet answered with motorcycle terror

Gen-Z leaders speaking from hospital beds daylights were unequivocal: today’s attack is the direct result of the impunity granted after the September slaughter. “The Home Administration has protected the killers for two months,” said one organiser. “When murderers walk free, their brothers feel brave enough to break our bones in daylight.” They demanded immediate arrest of the identified attackers and strict action against Mahesh Basnet for orchestrating political violence.

But who will bell the cat when the cat owns the state?

KP Sharma Oli, the man who lectures the nation about “peace and stability” from his balcony, has never once condemned the Bhadra 23 killings, never once distanced himself from Mahesh Basnet’s gangsterism. Silence is endorsement. Today’s broken bones in Dhangadhi are therefore Oli’s signature, as clearly as if he had swung the rod himself.

This is no longer a political party. CPN-UML under Oli and Basnet has become an organised protection racket that uses murder and intimidation to stay in power. Seventy-six graves from Bhadra 23 and countless injuries today are the price Nepal pays for allowing one man’s arrogance and one gangster’s thugs to go unchallenged.

The youth of this country have a simple message tonight: we will not forget the 76. We will not forgive the broken arms. And we will not stop until Oli’s terror machine and Basnet’s motorcycle mobs are dismantled once and for all.