The deposed captain of the Nepal cricket team, Sandeep Lamichhane, was arrested on suspicion of rape upon his return from overseas to Kathmandu on Thursday, police said.
On the run since an arrest warrant was issued on September 8 for the alleged rape of a minor, Sandeep Lamichhanee has been taken into police custody, Dinesh Raj Mainali, a security guard, told AFP. -say Kathmandu District Police.
An investigation has been opened after a 17-year-old girl complained who accused the rising Nepalese cricket star of raping her in a hotel room on August 22 after a night out together.
«Our investigation and other legal proceedings will move forward.“said the spokesperson.
Dressed in a white hooded sweatshirt, wearing a black cap and mask, the cricket star was apprehended when he got off the plane by the police who came to wait for him at Kathmandu airport. Hands hidden under a scarf, he was loaded into a van.
Sandeep Lamichhane had announced his return to Kathmandu on Thursday on his Facebook page, disclosing his flight details and pledging “to cooperate“to the investigation for”prove (one’s) innocence».
At the beginning of September, when the arrest warrant was issued against him, Sandeep Lamichhanee was then playing in the Jamaica Tallawahs tournament of the Caribbean Cricket League which was taking place in the West Indies. He was immediately suspended from his post as captain of the national cricket team.
«I am INNOCENT and I firmly believe in the respectable laws of Nepal“, he had proclaimed in a press release broadcast on social networks, assuring that he was going to return to defend himself in his country.
But the sportsman did not return to Nepal quickly and repeated his innocence on social networks, justifying his prolonged stay abroad by his mental state disturbed by the case.
«The news of the arrest warrant issued against me (…) disturbed me mentally. I couldn’t think of what to do or what not to do“, he wrote.
The Nepalese police then announced that they had requested the help of Interpol and the police cooperation of its nearly 200 member countries in this file.
Nepali public opinion is divided over the case, with some supporting the hugely popular cricketer.
Most “victims are speaking out now and the way the police are acting brings hopesaid Mohna Ansari, a former member of the National Human Rights Commission. Because “laws are not enough» et «a lot needs to be done to change society“, she added.
Some 2,300 rape cases were reported in Nepal last year, police say, but rights advocates point out that many assaults go unreported in the deeply patriarchal country.
Only a handful of women in Nepal have spoken out during the #MeToo movement, and the alleged attackers singled out have received little or no concern.