Killer proclaimed King of Nepal

7.30 am - By DANIEL LAK and PETER POPHAM

KATHMANDU - Nepal woke up this morning to find itself with a critically wounded mass murderer for a monarch.

Crown Prince Dipendra murdered his father, King Birendra, his mother, Queen Aishwarya, and eight other members of the royal family and court on Friday night (Saturday morning NZT), before turning his gun on himself.

As he lay severely wounded in hospital yesterday, and as Nepal entered 13 days of deep mourning, he was declared Nepal's new king.

The tragedy began, sources inside Kathmandu's palace say, with the latest run-in between the king and queen and their elder son over the question of whom he was to marry.

Dipendra's choice, though of royal blood, did not chime with the Queen's view. She had found him a suitable candidate. Pressure on the prince was mounting: no heir to the Nepali throne, it was said, had remained single beyond 30, and Dipendra is 31.

The time was 9pm (3am NZT), the scene one of the palace's enormous, dingy drawing rooms; Dipendra had allegedly been drinking ­ and something snapped.

He went upstairs, changed into military fatigues, and returned carrying a submachine gun. With a few bursts of fire at close range, he came close to exterminating his entire family. He gave his father and mother the coup de grâce with a field pistol, then turned the gun on himself.

Doctors who were quickly on the scene said they had never seen such terrible injuries. It was the largest elimination of royals since Lenin ordered the murder of Russia's Romanovs in 1918.

Crown Prince Dipendra, however, educated like his father at Eton, survived the attempt at suicide and is now in hospital on life support.

And in the most bizarre twist to a story which already rivals an ancient Greek or Jacobean tragedy, the desperately ill man was yesterday named Nepal's new king.

The Royal Privy Council, following the straightforward rules laid down in the 1990 Constitution that transformed Nepal's absolute monarchy into a constitutional one, apparently found they had no choice in the matter.

They also announced, however, that the dead king's younger brother, Prince Gyanendra, was appointed to the post of Royal Assistant or Regent.

The gory events have been followed at lightning speed by the cremation of the dead.

In Hindu practice, the interval between death and cremation is generally as brief as possible ­ though an anonymous government official said: "Normally the bodies of royal family members should have been kept for at least a day to enable the people to pay their last respects. The haste with which it was done raises suspicions."

Whatever the truth of that, last night, while stunned Nepalese milled about on the capital's streets, members of the court set out from the Army Hospital carrying the bodies of the dead on their shoulders on the long, seven-mile procession to Nepal's holiest Hindu temple, Pashupatinath Temple, on the banks of the Bagmati River.

On the way the cortège passed through Thamel, the popular backpackers' district, before finally reaching the temple, devoted to Shiva, which is considered so important for the well-being of Nepal that the King mentions it in all his messages to the people.

Nepal is the only Hindu monarchy in the world, and Pashupatinath is a magnet for devotees of Shiva from all over India. Last night, long after dark, the dead royals were covered with piles of fragrant sandalwood, and cremated on the bank of the Bagmati river.

Tens of thousands of the king's subjects lined the funeral route. Even though his power was drastically reduced in 1990, following an uprising which cost at least 70 lives, King Birendra remained a widely popular figure, looked up to by many Hindus not only as king but as a divinity, an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu the preserver.

Although the facts of the royal massacre seemed well attested by survivors who wished to remain anonymous, Kathmandu was awash with rumours.

Yesterday several hundred demonstrators gathered outside the building where the Privy Council was meeting carrying portraits of the murdered king and queen and chanting slogans such as "Long Live the King and Queen", "Punish the Guilty" and "Death to the Prime Minister".

Police prevented the crowd from reaching the building and used force to disperse it.

The rumour that found most favour was that the son of the king's brother Prince Gyanendra, Prince Paras Shah, was responsible for the massacre.

Paras Shah is alleged to be a drunk, and last September reportedly ran over and killed a popular Nepali musician, a crime for which he was neither arrested nor charged.

One of the demonstrators outside the building where the council was meeting said: "I do not believe what we are hearing from the foreign news media. I do not think any son would kill his parents for such a trifling reason."

A roadside peanut vendor, Thulia Tamang, said: "It is a matter of great distress that our beloved king died the way he did. He has done so much for our country."

The government's tardiness in providing an official explanation for the massacre provoked anger.

"The more the government keeps quiet about the events, the more the rumour mills will have a chance to play," one local journalist remarked.

Prince Paras Shah was in the room when the massacre took place, but anonymous witnesses claim that he did what he could to stop his cousin committing the murder, and sustained slight injuries.

Yesterday's ghastly events come at a critical time for Nepal. The impoverished Himalayan kingdom, population 23 million, has struggled to find its feet as a parliamentary democracy, but one weak and allegedly corrupt government has followed another.

Allegations of graft against the current prime minister, Girija Koirala, have prompted the opposition, led by the Communist Party of Nepal, to boycott parliament for the past six months.

Last week the country was closed down for three days by a general strike demanded by the opposition. With its royal family almost wiped out, Nepal has a prime minister the opposition refuses to do business with, and ultra-left revolutionaries gathering in the countryside.

Nepal has several dozen different ethnic groups and many castes and languages, and the monarchy has historically been the only glue holding it all together. The glue has not always worked, though the king's status is thought to have benefited from the first shambolic 10 years of democracy.

Although Nepalis were stunned by the events, their royal family's history is crossed with bloodshed. King Birendra's ancestor, Prithvi Narayan Shah, seized the throne by force in 1769.

In 1846, a scheming nobleman arranged for all aspirants to the throne to be butchered, and his family ruled as hereditary prime ministers for more than a century.

- INDEPENDENT