Silently, without any fanfares, Halkhoriya, the Jungle where Ram Bomjon held many people captive and tortured them, became part of Nepal’s protected nature reserve years ago. Equipped by cameras and guarded by anti-poaching army patrols, hopefully it will never again enable the Brutal Buddha to chain hostages to trees and beat people to blood without being “camera trapped” … Although there are enough reasons to be skeptical, at least for the tigers and other wild animals, Halkhoriya apparently returned to be a heaven instead of that hell, which was its situation during the times of Bomjon’s vandalizing stay there.
Still, we should be careful not to get into overly optimistic conclusions too easily. The idealism of UK’s animal conservationists and Nepal’s nature protectors could be expressed more in words and paper, than in the practice, as my previous article about Halkhoriya’s recent situation “What happened with the Halkhoriya Jungle?” suggests…
The Kathmandu Post had published an article about Bomjon’s attempt to officially acquire Halkhoriya from the Government in 2018:
Forest officials clueless about government plan for Parsa Park
(Archive.today and Archive.org)
While, in the same time, on Feb 13, 2018 Ram Bahadur Bamjan religious group had demanded 700 hectares of forest land in Halkhoriya”….
So can it be that the London-based ZSL is just too far to see the real situation on Nepal’s land, and funneled money to restore the jungle just for Bomjon to encroach it again, this time in a cleared-up, enlivened form and by Government approval?
Featured image: Halkhoriya Daha (Lake) in 2019. Restoration activities transform the lake to an oasis in an otherwise dry landscape. Source: ZSL
Although Halkhoriya had become Parsa Wildlife Reserve’s part from 2015, and continued to belong to it even after it was upgraded to Parsa National Park, Ram Bomjon seems to have a special Government-endorsed access to continue his dark activities against human beings there, any time he wishes. One of the currently disappeared 6 monks and nuns from him, Suresh Ale Magar (Molam lama) had been apparently also abducted in Halkhoriya after he had been lured to return from his family house, surprisingly during the time when Halkhoriya was (on paper!) already a National Wildlife Reserve:
“Jas Bahadur Waiba, Bomjon’s assistant, had taken Suresh to the Halkhoriya-based ashram to teach Buddhism. “He was in a great dilemma over whether to return to the ashram when he had come home in the third week of May 2015. Since then, he is out of contact. We are clueless about his whereabouts,” said Hasta Bahadur.”
The Kathmandu Post: Ram Bomjan to travel abroad to ‘collect cash’
So it there is a silent agreement between the Government and Ram Bomjon, and apparently also the Parsa National Park, Forest Department and London ZOO (!) to allow Bomjon to continue to encroach hundreds of hectares of Halkhoriya to continue to hold abducted people hostage and torture them, as he did to dozens from 2007, including me and Mata Aani in 2012.
Image above: Ram Bomjon invited by Sher Bahadur Deuba to the PM’s official residence Baluwatar on January 16, 2018. It is probably when the then PM had granted him a special Government-authorized access to Halkhoriya Daha, in a secret agreement (the meeting was not publicized), although Bomjon had unofficial access to Halkhoriya in previous years as well. That’s why I am claiming over many years, that the disappeared victims of Ram Bomjon should be searched for in Halkhoriya .
Anyway, let’s see what Parsa National Park and the UK ZSL did for making the destroyed (by Bomjon!) nature healthy again between 2015 and 2017 (and let’s hope that the Government did not give Bomjon’s “religious group” Bodhi Shrawan Dharma Sangha the demanded 700 dectares of it):
The (silent and unnoticed) ‘Roaring tale of Halkhoriya’s restoration’
The article A roaring tale of restoration of the ZSL (London Zoo) website(Archive.org and Archive.today) describes the “secretive event” of adding Halkhoriya to the nature reserve of Parsa. Secretive, because not long ago Ram Bomjon’s followers had claimed that Halkhoriya had been granted by the Nepali Government to them (namely, by the late Prime Minister Sushil Koirala in 2014 and soon after him, again, the then Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba in 2018!). As it is Nepal, one can never be sure who is right. Yet, as soon as we read these facts (of Halkhoriya becoming part of Parsa Wildlife Reserve) on an UK-based conservationist website, there is a reason to take it seriously and be more optimistic.
It is clear to everyone familiar with the history of Ram Bomjon and Halkhoriya during his “Tapasya”, that the jungle, lake and water resources had suffered mainly during his stay there. Because it was not only a stay, but an encroachment, with 3 hand-pumps drying out the water reserves of the ground, dozens of wooden-clay and bamboo houses and at least 5 cement houses, and a settlement of around 50 to 100 followers who all had been permanently using up the water, washing, laundry, cooking, using detergents, burning down grass, using 2, sometimes 3 noisy generators for powering computers and lights… Bomjon’s public events called “blessing programs” or “Maitri Pujas” had attracted hundreds of thousands of people, who had been only regularly amplifying the destruction of the formerly pristine jungle.
Bomjon using Halkhoriya as a perfect place to hide his hostages and torture them prolongedly, had polluted the jungle even energetically, creating a hellish environment there, where human blood had been poured out many times and horrors of victims had filled the atmosphere…
The destruction of Halkhoriya was so imminent during Bomjon’s residence there, that it was even seen from the space. The below photo was made during his public event in November 2008:
In former years, when Bomjon was not so famous yet, Halkhoriya still looked like a nature, and the Lake had enough pure water for wild animals and occasional shepherds’ animals to drink.
It is obvious that the factual departure of Ram Bomjon from Halkhoriya helped the much suffered nature to start a new life. Although Bomjon had been officially granted Halkhoriya by Sushil Koirala in 2014, and he was still occasionally staying there in the first half of 2014 (attacking 5 men in September 2, 2014), he later moved to Sindhupalchowk and stayed much more in his new ashrams (Sindhuli, Sarlahi). He continued to stay in Halkhoriya with a small group of his attack-assistants though, when he wanted to kidnap and beat up some new people, as the deep jungle is ideal for that. Yet he never again moved there with all his hundreds of followers. The below photos show one of Ram Bomjon’s many cement houses in Halkhoriya (used often as his jails to lock up people!) and one of the 3 hand-pumps which had been providing the dozens of residents with water, apart from the drinking water spring from where they had been carrying water regularly:
The greatest damage to Halkhoriya had been done by misusing the water systems by Ram Bomjon’s vandalizing followers. The current efforts had repaired the damage: “Halkhoriya Lake has been rescued from being converted into a 15-ha swamp: earth excavation, removal of grasses and other woody plants, construction of wildlife friendly muddy embankments, rerouting of a small perennial stream, and outlet construction to allow overflow downwards have all helped restore the wetland habitat in an otherwise dry landscape.”
Halkhoriya was a jungle-village, but the overuse of plastics, detergents, metal and unnatural materials (oil for the generator), made it a very unecological endeavor. I enjoyed staying there, but felt broken after seeing Bomjon’s followers burning down the grass, burning their plastic rubbish and creating extreme chemical smell, and especially I felt disturbed by the regular use of noisy old-type generators. There was not enough water, and Bomjon’s followers started to search for possibilities to deviate other and other water resources from the jungle to satisfy their needs. When I visited Halkhoriya after Bomjon had been evicted, the destruction they left behind was appalling: the Pond and the Lake both had been dried up, the water spring had no water either, and there had been bricks and stones, metals and wires all over the place, from the construction of his “Kajogpa” villa. The smell of rotting and death was felt there… (second half of 2012).
So the move to add the are to Parsa Wildlife Reserve should be positive, as far as it is not in some dodgy agreement with Ram Bomjon’s “Bodhi Shrawan Dharma Sangha” (in practice his political supporters in Kathmandu), or with his local followers like the Piluwa’s strongman Jas Bahadur Waiba, or his Ratanpur “committee” chiefs Nil Bahadur Thing, Ram Kumar Tamang or Bed Bahadur.
The Hell for Bomjon’s victims became a heaven for tigers
The results of monitoring by conservationists speak for themselves:
“The tiger is a conservation-dependent species, and as a result, it responded to our interventions right away. By being able to fulfil its basic needs, we were able to increase the tiger population in the park three-fold since 2014, verified by our monitoring.”
ZSL mentions another concrete proof that adding Halkhoriya to Parsa Wildlife Reserve was a positive move:
“Parsa, which has historically been a sink for tiger populations, witnessed a landmark event when four years after the extension of the National Park, one of the camera traps photographed a female tiger with three cubs near Halkhoriya Lake, in the Extension Area. This is a concrete reminder that intervention activities can work wonders if applied appropriately.”
Image above: The tigress and one of her cubs in the Halkhoriya junction.Source: ZSL
I, who had been chained to a tree in Halkhoriya Jungle, near the Lake by Ram Bomjon for three months in 2012, I would really like to hope that the London Zoo initiative to help Nepal to restore Halkhoriya, was not a kind of preparation of the jungle to hand it over again to Nepal’s famous “Buddha Boy”… That would be a tragic decision, not only for the wildlife, but also for many next victims like I had been, because we know that Bomjon did not stop with his habit to kidnap people and torture them prolongedly. If he got access, or even settlement right in Halkhoriya again, there is a guarantee that the history will repeat itself, and Bomjon will chain to trees and torture new victims.
The Nepalese Government and police is supporting Bomjon in such an activity over the last 12 years, so allowing him to continue it in Halkhoriya would not only destroy the achievements of conservationists, but also create a new hell for Bomjon’s next and next victims, who cannot ever hope in any protection from Nepal’s Government and police. More than 46 people had been kidnapped, locked up, chained, tied, tortured, raped, beaten, falsely imprisoned or killed by Nepal’s Government-protected “Maitriya Guru”, Ram Bomjon, between 2007 and 2019. Yet, it seems, Halkhoriya will be now better monitored, not yet to protect of Bomjon’s human victims, in case he would misuse Halkhroiya as his crime-base again, but at least to protect tigers and rhinos:
“…mobilization of more than 1000 security forces including the Nepal Army and Community Based Anti-Poaching Units, and construction of five additional guard posts during 2016-2018 have had a major impact for the recuperation of wildlife. The deployment of GSM-enabled surveillance cameras, SMART patrols, CCTV monitoring, and Rapid Response Teams have also provided the wildlife with an extra layer of protection. Furthermore, camera traps continue to assess the situation of wildlife in the area…” writes Shashanka Sharma, ZSL-Nepal project officer. ”
It is a pity that such a technical patrolling and human manpower had not been mobilized in 2012 in Halkhoriya, when two women, me and Mata Ani, had been tortured for three months in the dark forest.
If Nepal does not care about human beings like me or Mata Ani, who got entrapped by their “Buddha Boy”, at least the country cares about its tigers…
When and how was the “secret move” to add Halkhoriya to PWR brought to practice?
The ZSL article Boost for tigers as Nepal nature reserve expanded (Archive.org and Archive.today) writes:
“9th September 2015
A proposal to extend a Nepali nature reserve by nearly 130 square kilometres has been approved, potentially providing crucial new habitat for tigers in the area.
The Nepali cabinet approved the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) proposal to extend the Parsa Wildlife Reserve (PWR) to include Bara forests, increasing the total area of the reserve to more than 400 square kilometres.”
According to the proposal, the extension would enable an additional 20 tigers to inhabit Parsa Wildlife Reserve, making the total number of tigers there 40. It is an amazing amount for an area which I was able to criss-cross only on foot and occasionally on bicycle… It would be really amazing if instead of Ram Bomjon’s loudspeakers and oil-fed noise generators the jungles would resonate with tiger woofing (the most common sound of a satisfied tiger).
Image above: Resident tigress takes a stroll near Halkhoriya Lake, in the Extension Area, Source: ZSL
“The extension will also enable animals to move between the PWR and Halkhoriya Daha, the largest natural lake in the Narayani zone, regarded as a lifeline for species such as the threatened greater one-horned rhinoceros.
The total area of potential habitat (including ‘buffer zones’: land around the protected areas which acts as migrating corridors for species such as elephants, tigers and rhinos) could amount to more than 2,500 square kilometres.”
If everything written here was true, Halkhoriya would be in the hand of Parsa Wildlife Reserve’s conservationists, and monitored and beloved like Chitwan or Bardiya.
Another article from 2017 ZSL flagship site upgraded to National Park (Archive.org and Archive.today) but claims that the Parsa reserve got a higher score due to the extension by Bara forests:
“by ZSL on
Relevant link:
The Halkhoriya Times 
What do you think about this? Your comment is welcome!