PARLIAMENT SPEAKER IN NEPAL RESIGNS AFTER RAPE ACCUSATION

October 1, 2019
Bhadra Sharma
NY Times

 

KATHMANDU, Nepal — The speaker of Nepal’s lower house of Parliament resigned from his position on Tuesday after a parliamentary employee accused him of raping her on Sunday in her apartment in Kathmandu, the capital.

The lawmaker, Krishna Bahadur Mahara, a towering figure in the country’s governing Nepal Communist Party, denied assaulting the woman and suggested that she was retaliating after being denied a job in his office.

But after the woman’s accusations became public on Monday, the party faced increasing pressure to take action.

At an emergency meeting