Contractor’s shooting 

The fatal daytime shooting of Sharad Kumar Gauchan, the chairman of the Federation of Contractors Association of Nepal (FCAN), right next to the national parliament, is a sign of fragile state of law and order. The police say they have already identified the killers—there were apparently two of them—and will soon nab them. Alas, that will be too late for Gauchan’s bereaved family that has lost its chief breadwinner. Gauchan’s shooters chose to open fire in a broad daylight in place that always has a heavy police presence. Thus, in a way, Monday’s shooting was an open challenge to the authority of Nepal Police. This is why we really hope that the police have indeed identified the killers and that they will soon be thrown in jail. If the police are able to quickly get to the bottom of this incident, it will add to their credibility and public trust in the institution will increase. But get this case wrong, and the old perception that our police force is irredeemably corrupt and incompetent will be reinforced. 

Along with solving this incident, we believe time has also come to clamp down on illegal trade in small arms that are being frequently used in these crimes. The number of small arms in Nepal greatly proliferated during the decade-long Maoist insurgency. Both during and after the insurgency, the open border with India allowed criminal elements to procure small arms from across the border without any hassles. Thankfully, of late, even India seems to have realized that the Nepal-India border needs to be better regulated to curtail easy movement of small arms and criminals, which is increasingly becoming a headache for law enforcement agencies in India as well. We hope the ongoing EPG process can arrive at some mutually-agreeable solution on this. This is not something that can be taken lightly. The periodic mass shootings in the US, most recently in Las Vegas that killed 58 people, show just how deadly uncontrolled proliferation of small arms can be to the society. Thankfully, even with all those guns in circulation, there has been no such instance of mass shooting in Nepal. 

Gauchan’s shooting right on the eve of the provincial and federal elections has also given rise to suspicions over possible use of small arms to influence these crucial elections. The threats that easy availability of guns poses to the society are incalculable. Right around the world, the higher the number of guns in the hands of civilians, the higher the incidents of crimes in that country. It was with great difficulty that our law enforcement agencies were able to remove from the scene the armed criminal groups that had proliferated after the formal end of the Maoist war. But, in the climate of constant political flux, these groups are slowly regrouping. Moreover, as guns become easily available, the chances of lone-wolf attacks like the Las Vegas mass shooting drastically increase. It should not take the horror of a mass shooting or a terrorist attack to bring this message home. 

 
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