Nepal's former prime minister KP Sharma Oli was arrested on Saturday for his involvement in the deadly crackdown on the insurgency that ousted him six months ago, AFP reports.
Along with Sharma Oli (74), his former home minister, Ramesh Lekhak, was also arrested for questioning in the investigation into the events of September 2025, said Pawan Kumar Bhattarai, a police spokesman in the capital Kathmandu.
Arrests after the installation of the new government
The arrests come a day after the installation of a government led by 35-year-old rapper-turned-Kathmandu mayor Balendra Shah, whose centrist Independent National Party was a landslide winner in March 5 parliamentary elections.
Shortly after his arrest, KP Sharma Oli was taken under police escort to a hospital. “He was admitted on a doctor's recommendation,” Bhattarai said, adding that the septuagenarian was suffering from heart and kidney problems.
In a 900-page report that was published in full on Thursday, a commission of inquiry recommended the opening of criminal proceedings against Oli, the former interior minister and police chief.
At least 76 people were killed and 2,400 injured during the two days of riots, from September 8-9, 2025, according to the commission's assessment. The riots, known as the Gen Z Revolution, began with thousands of young people taking to the streets to protest the blocking of access to social media and the corruption of political elites. At least 19 people were then killed by bullets.
On September 9, the angry crowd destroyed, burned or looted several public buildings, including the Parliament and the Prime Minister's house. Peace was established only during the evening, with the appearance of the army on the streets.
The commission of inquiry did not establish whether there was “a formal order to open fire”, but assessed that “no effort was made to stop or control the shooting”.
The former prime minister blames “anarchist forces”
Leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN-UML), KP Sharma Oli has repeatedly denied that he gave the order to open fire on the protesters. During the election campaign in which he lost his seat to Balendra Shah, he blamed “infiltrators” and “anarchist forces” for the violence.
“This arrest is revenge,” a senior official in his party, Mahesh Basnet, said at the end of an emergency meeting of Nepali communists. Oli's supporters took to the streets in the capital to demand his immediate release and set up barricades and set fire to tires. In the Baneshwor district, the police dispersed the crowd with tear gas.
The seizure of power by Balendra Shah, the mouthpiece of the youth protest movement, and his party marks the rise of a new generation of Nepal's rulers.
In the first cabinet meeting he presided over on Friday, Shah decided to implement the inquiry commission's recommendations. “Nobody is above the law (…) It's not a revenge against anyone, it's just the beginning of justice,” commented the new Minister of the Interior Sudan Gurung, a prominent figure of the September demonstrations, on Instagram.
“I was very happy to hear the news. Those who were involved in the September deaths must be punished,” Bhavani Timilsina, whose daughter was seriously injured in those protests, told AFP.
A four-time Prime Minister since 2015, KP Sharma Oli has had a political career spanning nearly four decades.
