NEW DELHI, May 7 (IslamOnline) - Apparently for the first time ever in the Nepal's history, the army shot dead two Muslims inside a mosque 20 km east of headquarters of Nawalparsi in Nepal on May 5, according to reports in Indian newspapers today.

Confirming the news, a Nawalparsi district official said the authorities reportedly acted on a tip-off that 'explosives' were hidden inside the mosque. Those killed allegedly worked earlier in an ammunition factory in India.

Mahalwari, where the mosque is situated, is close to the Indo-Nepal border. Nepali authorities also said that during the army raid 'explosives and bombs' were found. Reportedly the explosives were hidden under a pile of sand inside the mosque presently under construction. The place, according to available information, hosts a religious fair every summer.

According to eyewitnesses quoted by the Indian media, “We hear that the explosives were hidden in a pile of sand in the mosque.”

Nepalese sources, however, said that when the army raid took place the two persons killed tried to escape from the mosque. Eyewitnesses claimed that an imam of a mosque was arrested after the raid, whereas a Katmandu-based daily reported three arrests.

On India’s repeated insistence that Nepal is a hotbed of Pakistani military intelligence (ISI) and international Islamic terrorism, the Nepal government began monitoring madrsas and mosques all over the country for three months. In line with New Delhi’s thinking under the terrorism-obsessed BJP, the Government of Nepal began to harbor fears for some time that subversive elements in Muslim religious institutions, especially madrasas and mosques, may be active although there is no concrete proof of such activity either on the Indian side of the border or on the Nepali side.

Indian media has been publishing dubious reports issued or leaked by the Indian home ministry about terrorist activity in Muslim institutions on the Indo-Nepal borders although not a single madrasa or masjid has been pinpointed where such activity is taking place. When pressed by GM Banatwala, a Muslim member of the Indian Parliament, to pinpoint such institutions the paranoid Home Minister of India, LK Advani, told him that such institutions exist on the Nepali side of the border!

New Delhi, on several occasions, voiced its concern to the Nepali government regarding ISI activities against India on the Nepali soil. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee raised this issue during his meeting with Nepal Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala during his state visit to India in December 2000. When the present Prime Minister of Nepal Sher Bahadur Deuba visited India last March, the issue of ISI’s activities against India from Nepalese soil was raised once again by Atal Behari Vajpayee. An Indian Airlines plane was hijacked from Kathmandu to Kandhar in December 1999. India seized this opportunity to claim that Nepal has become a hotbed of ISI activity against Delhi.

A state of emergency is in force since last November in the trouble-torn sole official 'Hindu' state in the world. Close on the heels of the infamous palace blood-bath in which the ruling monarch and his immediate family were wiped out, Nepal was caught in an unprecedented crisis. The present Nepal government is battling Maoist guerrillas who threaten to abolish monarchy and institute a socialist democracy. As such, army operations are in full swing with both sides reporting heavy casualties almost regularly. During the last few days, the Nepal army claimed to have killed more than 400 rebels in the western part of the country.

The killing of two Nepali Muslims inside a mosque left some important questions unanswered. Was the attack on Muslims inside a mosque under the influence of a neighbouring country? It is a well-known secret that undercover Indian policemen and agents regularly cross into Nepal, 'arrest' Muslims and others and drag them to the Indian side of the border while the Nepalis look the other way. The slain may have been Maoist insurgents who took refuge in a mosque..