Overview
The royal family met for a monthly gathering at the Narayanhiti Palace in Kathmandu on the first Friday of June 2001. Around half past eight, according to the official account, Crown Prince Dipendra — who had been drinking heavily and had been escorted to his room earlier in the evening — returned in combat fatigues carrying several weapons and opened fire.
Nine people died: King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya, Prince Nirajan, Princess Shruti, and five other members of the family. Dipendra was found with a gunshot wound to the head and died on 4 June without regaining consciousness. Under the constitution he had become king on his father's death, which meant Nepal was ruled for three days by a comatose man who was, by the state's own account, responsible for the massacre.
His uncle Gyanendra, who had not been at the palace that evening, became king.
The Inquiry
A high-level committee was appointed, chaired by Chief Justice Keshav Prasad Upadhyaya, with the Speaker of the House Taranath Ranabhat as a member. A third appointee, the leader of the main opposition party, declined to serve.
The committee interviewed survivors, staff and guards, and reported on 14 June 2001 in a document of about fifty pages. It concluded that Dipendra alone was responsible and that he had then shot himself.
The stated motive was domestic. Dipendra had wanted to marry Devyani Rana, and his mother in particular had opposed the match on grounds of lineage and politics, with the family reportedly threatening to withhold the succession. The account is of a long-running family dispute reaching its end during an evening of heavy drinking.
Why It Was Not Accepted
The scepticism in Nepal was immediate and has never really faded, and its grounds are more substantial than the usual reflex against official findings.
Dipendra was left-handed, and the head wound was reported on the left side, which is consistent — but accounts of the weapon's position and of the injury circulated in conflicting versions from the start. He was said to have been extremely drunk, and the massacre required moving between rooms with multiple weapons, reloading, and hitting a great many targets. Survivors' accounts differed on details including what he was wearing and whether he spoke.
The procedural objections carry more weight. No post-mortem examination was performed on the victims — the bodies were cremated within about twelve hours in accordance with custom. The palace was cleaned before any forensic examination. The inquiry sat for less than two weeks, its third member had refused to participate, and it was chaired by a judge appointed by the institution being investigated.
And then there is the beneficiary. Gyanendra was absent from the palace. His wife and son Paras were present and survived, Paras with minor injuries — a man with an unpopular public reputation who was reported to have sheltered others during the shooting. That the branch of the family that gained the throne was also the branch that survived is the fact the theory is built on.
What the Theory Holds
The common version is that Dipendra was a designated culprit for a killing carried out by others, with Gyanendra either directing it or benefiting from it. Wider versions invoke Indian intelligence, seeking a more pliable monarch; the Maoist insurgency then in its fifth year, which promptly described the massacre as a conspiracy; or elements of the army.
None has produced documentary support. What each has is the same structural observation: a succession that could not have been achieved by any lawful route was achieved in an evening, and the evidence that might have tested it was cremated by morning.
The Aftermath
Gyanendra's reign did not last. He dismissed the government and assumed direct power in 2005, was forced to restore parliament by mass protests in 2006, and in 2008 the constituent assembly abolished the monarchy after 240 years. He left the palace as a private citizen.
The building where it happened is now the Narayanhiti Palace Museum. Visitors are shown the rooms, and the bullet holes have been preserved.