World

Prince Responsible For Royal Deaths

June 14, 2001 / 11:01 AM EDT / CBS

Nepal's Crown Prince Dipendra was officially accused Thursday of massacring almost his entire family, including his parents, the king and queen.

The commission investigating the June 1 palace slaughter said in its report released Thursday night that it was certain Dipendra carried out the shootings, and that he fatally shot himself afterward.

"A drunken crown prince indiscriminately fired, killing the royals," Taranath Ranabhatt, the Speaker of the Lower House and one of the two-man commission, told a news conference broadcast live on Nepali state TV and radio.

Ranabhat said the girlfriend telephoned some aides of Dipendra within minutes, telling them that the crown prince was slurred in his speech and was probably sick.

The aides went looking for the crown prince and found him sprawled on the floor of his room, trying to take off a head band. They helped him to his feet and took him to the bathroom. But he ordered them to leave, Ranabhat said.

Shortly afterward, Dipendra made two more mobile phone calls to his girlfriend, he said.

After some time, Dipendra came down to the billiard room in army fatigues and carried out the killings, Ranabhat said.

The two-man probe committee of Supreme Court Chief Justice Keshav Prasad Upadhaya and House Speaker Taranath Ranabhat said Dipendra had consumed alcohol and smoked cigarettes laced with opium before he walked into the billiard room of the Narayanhiti Palace at night on June 1 and gunned down the nine victims.

Investigators interviewed more than 100 people, including eyewitnesses, staff at the royal palace, firearms and forensic experts, medical doctors and legal advisers, officials said.

Until now the official explanation for the killings had been an accident, but few of the Himalayan mountain kingdom's 22 million people had not already heard through the grapevine that Dipendra was guilty of the crime.

Many Nepalese don't believe the account of witnesses and relatives who said Crown Prince Dipendra gunned down his parents — the king and queen — and seven other royals during a family dinner.

The investigation committee was appointed by Birendra's unpopular successor, his brother King Gyanendra, to provide an explanation to a public skeptical that Dipendra was really behind the killings. After the massacre, thousands of angry mourners rioted in Nepal for several days.

Violent riots rocked the capital Kathmandu after new King Gyanendra was crowned last week, but authorities said Thursday they did not expect to have to impose another curfew.