Hope recedes for arrest of Nepal media tycoon's killers

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According to media reports Wednesday, the audacious killing of Shah, who was shot dead in his car during a traffic snarl in one of the most tightly guarded areas of the capital Sunday, was masterminded by a man police sources identified as Babloo Singh.

Singh, police believe, fled Nepal Sunday while the two men entrusted with the actual killing dumped the Yamaha motorcycle they had used to accost Shah's car and vanished.

Though police said they had found the abandoned two-wheeler dumped in a culvert in Kathmandu valley, there was little hope that the vehicle would offer clues to the identity of the gunmen.

The red motorcycle had a fake number plate and till now, the three investigating teams formed by the government have been unable to glean further information about the murderers.

Shah, who headed Nepal's first private television station Channel Nepal - that once sparked anti-Indian violence after wrongly attributing anti-Nepal sentiments to Bollywood star Hrithik Roshan - also owned Space Time Network, Nepal's first cable television network.

He was alleged to have links to one of the most wanted criminals in the world, Karachi-based Dawood Ibrahim, and to Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), allegations he said were levelled against him simply because he was a Muslim.

The allegations gained ground with his killing that resembled the gunning down of Nepali member of parliament Mirza Dilshad Beg near his own residence in 1998.

Beg's murder was owned up by an Indian underworld gang that became Dawood's prime rival, the Chhota Rajan group.

On Monday, a man called up several organisations in Kathmandu, claiming to be Rajan's former aide Bharat Nepali, and reportedly said he had ordered Shah's killing due to the latter's "anti-Indian activities".

Bharat Nepali had left Rajan recently to form his own gang after nearly two decades of taking part in organised crime with the latter.

The Kathmandu Post daily said Shah's death comes after the killing of two more persons last year, each reported to have been involved in running fake Indian currency networks spanning Pakistan, Nepal and India, as operatives of Dawood and the ISI.

On Oct 2, Majid Maniyar was killed in a hotel in Nepalgunj in southern Nepal, soon after the arrest of his son Vicky by the Indian police.

On Dec 25, another alleged fake currency kingpin, Saukat Beg, was shot dead in Butwal town close to the capital.

The killers of both are still at large.

"Like (Mirza Dilshad) Beg 12 years ago, all three have a few things in common," the Post said. "All are believed by the Indian establishment to have cultivated close links with the Pakistani intelligence and all are said to have worked against Indian national interests."