The Supreme Court of Nepal ordered the government Wednesday to allow a private radio station to relay BBC programmes, the station's chief said. "We will resume the broadcast of the BBC Nepali Service from Wednesday," Radio Sagarmatha chief Lakshman Upreti said.
"The November 29 order issued by the ministry banning the broadcast of BBC Nepali service is not based on any factual and lawful grounds. So the order ought not to be enforced till the case is finalized in the court," read the interim order passed by a division bench of Justices Khil Raj Regmi and Damodar Prasad Sharma.
Armed Nepali police stormed Radio Sagarmatha (the Nepali name for Mount Everest) on November 27, detained four reporters and seized equipment to stop it relaying a BBC interview with Maoist rebel chief Prachanda. The reporters were released last week.
The government had ordered the radio station not to relay news bulletins of the BBC Nepali Service saying under government curbs private radios were not allowed to broadcast news. The Nepali radio station regularly relays the BBC's Nepali Service, which broadcast a rare interview with Prachanda last week.
"Now it is the moral obligation of the government to return the equipment following today's order," said advocate Satish Krishna Kharel. General secretary of the Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists (NEFEJ) Bhupendra Basnet, said that NEFEJ, which owns the radio station, would file a case in the court to get the equipment back if the government did not return it.
