By Simon Denyer
KATHMANDU, Nepal (Reuters) - Rajmati's husband set off to buy vegetables from the market more than a year ago. Three hours later, an anonymous caller phoned to say Arjun had been arrested by security forces and bundled into a car.
She has not seen him since.
"My children are asking where is our papa," she said, giving way to tears at a public forum last month.
Nepal is best known as home to the world's highest mountain, but the Himalayan kingdom now has a darker claim to fame.
More people "disappear" every year here than anywhere else in the world, according to the United Nations, the country even eclipsing notorious trouble spots like Colombia.
One of the world's most beautiful countries is locked in one of its ugliest civil wars. More than 11,000 people have died since Maoist rebels launched an insurgency in 1996 to topple the monarchy and set up a communist republic.
The Maoists, who control much of the countryside, are accused of executing and torturing critics and opponents, and abducting and recruiting children to work for their cause.
But Nepal's ill-trained army and security forces are playing almost as dirty, international and local human rights groups say.
"The human rights situation is deteriorating day-by-day," said Nayan Bahadur Khatri, chairman of Nepal's National Human Rights Commission. "Every day we get reports of violations from both sides, mass abductions, kidnappings, murders, rape."
NHRC says it is still trying to trace more than 1,300 people who have "disappeared" in the past two years, most at the hands of security forces. New York-based Human Rights Watch says extrajudicial killings and disappearances have risen sharply as the state tries to "break the backbone" of the rebellion.
"Most of the persons 'disappeared' by Nepal's security forces have likely been killed after interrogations," it said in a report last October. "Torture in custody is common."
Rajmati called her husband that night on his mobile phone.
"He said he had been detained by security forces, and I shouldn't worry," she told Reuters in the privacy of a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Kathmandu.
She phoned him again a few more times in the next few days, only to hear silence at the other end of the line. Since then the phone has been dead.
Rajmati and Arjun have two daughters, ages 5 and 8.
"I tell them he has gone to the office," she said. "The youngest one still does not know what has happened to him. She asks when he is coming home, whether she can go to his office."
Rajmati said her husband never talked about politics, but might have been a member of an organization in their ethnic Newar community thought to have links with the Maoists.
That in itself, rights groups say, does not justify detention without trial, nor without informing relatives. Anti-terror legislation renewed last year has only fueled a sense of impunity among the army and security forces, they say.
NHRC says the army has published lists of a few hundred detainees but is not cooperating with their inquiries or their requests to visit detention centers.
Army spokesman Brigadier-General Deepak Gurung admits there have been problems, but the army was determined to stamp out abuses.
The military is investigating a list of 217 "disappeared" supplied by the U.N., he said. Some are already being accounted for, while other cases may turn out to have different explanations,
"A lot of people are going south to India for work and that is a disappearance. Maoists are responsible for abducting and forcefully recruiting people, and using them on the battlefield."
Surendra says he was detained by the army for 13 months before being freed last month. His account gives some idea about what may be happening behind closed doors, NHRC says.
"Most of time I was blindfolded and my hands were tied with rope," he said. "They beat me with a big stick on my soles, legs and back. They submerged my head in water. They asked for information about the Maoists."
On the outside, the torture is just as real for the families of the disappeared. Elderly couple Tika and Sabitri tell of their endless and fruitless quest for their daughter Tara, arrested while studying in Kathmandu 15 months ago.
"We promised never to return to our village until we found her," said 58-year-old gray-haired Tika, his wife in tears at his side. "We have not spared a single police post or army station in Kathmandu. Wherever we go they say she is not there."
Shanta Bhandari leads an informal group of families of the disappeared. Her 22-year-old son was abducted two and half years ago, apparently because he belonged to a student group linked to the Maoists.
"Our demand is not that they should be released," she said. "If they have done something wrong, then punish them. But don't disappear them -- give us information."
For Rajmati, finally, a ray of hope. In the last few weeks, an article in a newspaper listed two men with her husband's name among dozens in a notorious detention center. The address given was slightly wrong, but similar enough to fuel her hopes.
"Maye it was a misprint," she said. "I still have hope that he is alive."
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