11 January 2009
Uma Singh
Knife attack
About 15 unidentified people attacked Uma Singh, a 27-year-old print and radio reporter, in her home in the southeastern district of Dhanusa in the Janakpur zone in the south of Nepal near the border with India, according to local and international news reports.
Singh died of multiple stab wounds to the head and upper body while being transferred from a local hospital to a larger one later that evening.
Some journalists and civil society groups said they believe local Maoists may have been involved in the murder. Among other suggested motives, Nepal 's National Human Rights Commission suspects she was silenced by Maoist workers, who Singh blamed for the abduction and murder of her father and brother in 2006, according to the My Republica news Web site.
Several local news outlets reported that the murder was personal revenge. Police detained at least three members of her family, including her sister-in-law, on suspicion of ordering the murder over a land dispute, according to local news reports. It is not clear if they have been charged.
Singh worked for the Nepali-language daily Janakpur Today and the local FM station Radio Today, according to news reports. She opposed threats to women's rights--including the local tradition of the bride's family paying costly dowries before marriage--and criticized political leaders involved in local unrest stemming from ethnic separatist movements, the reports said.
Militant groups operating in the plains and low hills in the region around Janakpur, known as the Terai, advocate autonomy, and the region has seen outbreaks of violence since 2006, according to published analyses. Despite opening negotiations with some groups, the recently elected government, dominated by the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), has failed to stem the aggression. "If we don't air the news of their choice, they threaten us with killing," Singh told the U.N. Mission in Nepal during an interview in 2008, describing local armed groups.
