KATMANDU, Nepal — Disillusioned with Hindu nationalists, the leader of a militant Hindu extremist group said contact with Christians in prison had led him to repent of bombing a Catholic church in Katmandu in May 2008.
Ram Prasad Mainali, the 37-year-old chief of the Nepal Defense Army, was arrested Sept. 5 for exploding a bomb in the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption in the Lalitpur area of Katmandu on May 23. The explosion killed a teenager and a newly married woman from India’s Bihar state and injured more than a dozen others. In Katmandu’s jail in the Nakkhu area, Mainali said he regretted bombing the church.
“I bombed the church so that I could help re-establish Nepal as a Hindu nation. … But I was wrong. Creating a religious war cannot solve anything; it will only harm people,” he said.
Mainali said he began reading the Bible after experiencing the graciousness of prison Christians. “Although I bombed the church, Christians come to meet me everyday,” he said. “No rightwing Hindu has come to meet me even once.”
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