Nepal, Oct. 21 -- Amid a spate of arrests of lawmakers over the past few weeks, one case that has drawn national attention is an explosion and a subsequent mass murder 12 years ago in Rautahat. Mohammad Aftab Alam, a Member of Parliament from the Nepali Congress, is currently in custody, facing charges of orchestrating the explosion and the murder of the survivors.

Ever since Alam's arrest on October 13 as per a Supreme Court ruling issued in May 2012, new information regarding the blast, the murder and its victims are filtering in. The politician's detention has also opened the floodgates of claims and counterclaims and lost in this din is one crucial question: why did it take 12 years for authorities to arrest a person accused of such ...