KATHMANDU, Nepal: The wife of the Nepal’s former Maoist insurgent leader now serving as country’s prime minister died in the Himalayan republic Wednesday after a protracted illness, her husband’s physician said.
Sita Dahal married Pushpa Kamal Dahal, better known by his nom de guerre Prachanda (“The Fierce One”), more than 50 years ago when both were teenagers.
Few details about their lives are on the public record, nonetheless, Sita was by her husband’s side when he launched a decade-long insurgency against the government back in 1996.
Sita, 69, had long suffered from multiple ailments including hypertension and diabetes.
Yubraj Sharma, the PM’s official doctor, said in a statement that she suffered a cardiac arrest Wednesday morning. “Despite resuscitation (attempts), she could not be revived,” he said.
Nepal’s civil war claimed over 17,000 lives before a peace deal ended the conflict in 2006.
Sita was serving as an adviser to her husband’s Nepal Communist Party (Maoist Center), which entered mainstream parliamentary politics after the insurgency ended.
“Our entire party is shocked by the tragic death of Comrade Sita Dahal,” the party said in a statement.
Sita “played a coordinating role as the parent of the entire party during the stormy years of the civil war, to resolve challenges, crises and disputes within the party”, the statement added.
In neighbouring India, PM Narendra Modi said he was “extremely saddened” to learn of her death.
“I express my sincere condolences… and pray that the departed soul finds eternal peace,” he wrote on Twitter. The couple had four children, two of whom have since died. —AFP
