Our neighbourhood street dog Ramri is barking more than usual. Last night, unknown men tried to break into a house in our area, on the outskirts of Kathmandu. Tonight, my father will join a group of neighbours in the locality to patrol the streets and keep vigil.

Last week, my uncle’s family in Maharajganj, Kathmandu, experienced two break-ins. These are just some of several such incidents being reported in Nepal since last Monday, 8 September.

That day, Nepal witnessed a massive political demonstration called by youth termed as ‘Gen Z’, forced onto the streets following a ban on social media. The country runs on a remittance economy, with about 2,000 Nepalis leaving daily to work in the Gulf countries, Malaysia and elsewhere. Meanwhile, the leaders, politicians, and their children, lead lavish lifestyles — which Gen Z had been criticising on social media.

After police firing killed several protestors, some of them students, the ensuing public outrage led to the fall of the then government and the nomination of an interim one.

On the sidelines of these key political developments, there were incidents of assault, break-ins, robberies and arson. Entire establishments have been burnt to cinders. Government buildings and private homes of former ministers have been torched.

Altogether 51 people, mostly protestors but also some security personnel, have been killed and hundreds more injured.

A week of turmoil

The past week has been one of turmoil. The week of September 8, 2025 began as usual for R.C. Gautam, an errands man at Kantipur Television, Kathmandu, where I worked for nearly 14 years starting as a trainee journalist.

In his two decades there, RC has witnessed many street protests, dire political situations, a civil war, shootouts, and violence. The station has been attacked in the past, including with stones.

But last Tuesday was different. A mob forced the staff out and torched three of the station’s buildings, besides two dozen motorbikes and over a dozen motorcars.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how many people stormed our station. It all happened so quickly,” he told me over the phone from an acquaintance’s home.

With the army clampdown and curfew in place, he had to stay there for some days before being able to go home.

Kantipur TV is among the hundreds of buildings and homes attacked in wake of the protests. When the Gen Z protesters took to the streets last Monday, they had planned peaceful protests, with music and dancing. Some local celebrities even showed up to support the movement.

However, the situation quickly spiralled out of control after some older men in the crowd targeted parliament, as eyewitnesses told local TV reporters. This is also visible in footage of the attacks.

The move triggered a riot, with the Kathmandu chief district officer allowing the police to open fire. “The indiscriminate use of force against unarmed Nepalis turned into a massacre,” as a report in the Nepali Times put it.

At least 19 died that day, a death toll that has since risen.

A burning city

The following day saw more violence as bands of arsonists materialised on the streets, vandalising and torching the homes of ministers and businesses connected to those in power. Entire ministerial quarters, government buildings, police stations, the Supreme Court and the country’s main administrative block, Singha Durbar, were torched.

Kathmandu was burning. It smelled of rage. The air was so thick, it was choking.

As smoke started filling the air in the Budhanilkantha locality where I live, north of the city, and army choppers began relentlessly circling the sky above me, my instinct as a former reporter made me step out. On the street across from where I live, smoke fogged up houses — the air stank.

Nearby, former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s private residence had been attacked. Choppers made several rounds unsuccessfully attempting to airlift the couple. Deuba and his wife, former minister Arju Deuba, were manhandled by the mob and injured but eventually evacuated through a back door.

I watched a plume of smoke rise from Deuba house and drift towards the hills of the Shivapur National Park, just a couple of kilometres north. Gunshots were heard, and neighbours said two men had died – deaths that have not been verified.

Former President Bidhya Bhandari’s private residence nearby was also burning, and the public had open access to it. I found a crowd lingering outside, engaged in chit-chat. What I overheard:

“What did you take?”

“I didn’t really get my hands on anything.”

“Someone took 240,000 Nepali rupees, and some US dollars.”

“People stole bottles of expensive foreign liquor.”

“Someone took a mattress.”

“I only took a cake.”

On my evening walks, passing the Bhandari home, I would see armed guards deployed by the government stationed at the security posts. On Tuesday, as her house burned, its residents evacuated, the guards were still there, guarding a building they had been unable to save from the vandals who outnumbered them.

“This is our duty,” they told me.

The scenes at the Deuba and Bhandari homes were repeated across Kathmandu on Tuesday as arsonists moved from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, torching and plundering the homes of ministers and administrators, beating and even stripping them.

Former PM Jhalanath Khanal’s house was among the many private residences of former leaders attacked, He and his wife Rabi Laxmi Chitrakar were rescued by the army. While Khanal was unharmed, his wife sustained severe burns when their house was torched. Many Indian and even international media outlets initially reported that she had been ‘burned alive,’ and had to publish corrections later.

Sleepless in Kathmandu

Most Nepalis slept poorly after the police killings last Monday. People were seething, or grieving, or tired and scared. The anger initially directed at then Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli and the ruling coalition for killing unarmed protesters had cascaded into confusion by the next day.

No one knew who was backing the arsonists targeting specific homes and establishments. The attackers seemed to be operating by a list, exercising what appeared like premeditated attack tactics. Prisoners had escaped en masse in different parts of the country, let loose by the attackers.

Arsonists on motorcycles going door-to-door left behind a trail of what sounded like battle victory cries. Some wielded guns stolen from police stations they had stormed.

In Maharajgunj Chakrapath, the neighbourhood in Kathmandu I grew up in, a mob beat to death a high-ranking policeman. Army choppers rescued some policemen, airlifting them on a sling. This was the station my family and neighbours had looked to for security.

As the mayhem unfolded, I was texting a young journalist friend who’s from outside Kathmandu and lives in the capital for work and studies. She said she felt scared. I told her I would probably sleep with a pair of scissors tucked under my pillow, just in case. There were rumours that there had been stray incidents of men entering homes and raping women, something confirmed by the army later in an announcement.

Kathmandu was an inferno on Tuesday, as the police stopped fire brigades from moving for security reasons. Even if mobilised, they were unprepared for fire on such a great scale. No one had foreseen the violence and unrest of the kind that transpired.

By the time the ‘Gen Z’, who had launched the protest called for calm on social media and absolve themselves of responsibility for the violence, too much damage had been done. Their call had been for peaceful protests against corruption. But their movement was hijacked.

When the Nepal army chief addressed the nation last Tuesday evening offering security — coupled with prohibitory orders — there was a feeling of respite, that at least the rampage would stop. Army trucks patrolled the city, but residents spent the night in fear. There were reports of break-ins and looting of private residences in several areas.

Media during anarchy

After the attack on Kantipur TV on Tuesday, my former colleague, R.C. Gautam asked me: “What will happen next, didi? How am I going to feed the kids? How will I educate them? The office I worked at is gone.”

I didn’t have an answer for RC, but I mourned with him the loss of my former place of work, among many other things that were lost to us in those two days.

Kantipur TV began operating again last Friday from the ramshackle of a studio, with the wreckage as the background, showing the skeletons of cars and charred furniture and equipment. Kantipur Media Group, the biggest private legacy media, was known as an institution that stood its ground. While media houses are also about their owners and their advertisers, they’re mostly about the journalists who run them. Especially the non-partisan ones, who work to uphold high journalism standards. Many such journalists have worked at Kantipur Media Group over the years.

During the April 2006 street protests, hundreds of people had stopped outside the Kantipur complex in Tinkune, Kathmandu, to clap and show gratitude for its journalism. Those of us who worked there then looked out the window; some of us had tears of gratitude streaming down our faces.

The same establishment received different treatment last week. For many journalists who worked at Kantipur, their work was their home from where they launched treatises into the world, asked difficult questions and urged the Nepali people to think.

The burning of Kantipur TV points towards a troublesome point in Nepal’s history, where journalism has been vilified. Yes, some journalists do take shortcuts, and all legacy media is funded by businesses. But they’re also run by journalists who believe in truth-telling. Free and fair journalism is the foundation of democracy, and pulling down a media house like Kantipur TV signals the close of a period that trusted independent media.

If one of the things this movement is demanding is the restoration of freedom of speech, then taking down a media house is a symbolic contradiction.

Amidst the pandemonium, misinformation and disinformation, coupled with a rampage of reels from self-appointed thought leaders on the social media platforms hasn’t done much for the mental well-being of Nepalis in general.

Now what?

Last Friday night, September 12, former chief justice Sushila Karki, was sworn in as the interim Prime Minister. She was the first choice voted for by the Gen Z protesters on a social media platform Discord, a choice seconded by the Nepal Army. Karki, the first woman to serve as Nepal’s Chief Justice is now the country’s first woman Prime Minister and has just started to expand the cabinet that will support her and prepare for election in March 2026.

With PM Karki taking stock of the situation, the students killed in the protests have been declared martyrs and compensation of 10 lakh Nepali rupees each offered to families who lost their loved ones during the protest. The buildings gutted in the arsons have begun to be restored, with fire fighters continuing to put out fire inside buildings that have turned into incinerators from days of burning.

En masse cremations were held on Saturday for the deceased. Grief-struck mothers and relatives fell to their knees while saying their final goodbyes.

Nepalis are tired. We’ve seen homes burn, we’ve watched loved ones die, our colleagues shot at, beaten up, and our friends and family robbed, property and institutions destroyed. We’ve also seen men brandishing guns and other weapons, threatening innocents.

Who are these men? Who mobilised them? Where have the former ministers fled? Who is being sheltered at the army barracks? What will happen to those who have lost their jobs because the buildings they worked in are gone? Questions abound and investigations must be launched to answer them.

But for now, just in this moment, these queries can wait. Because right now, Nepalis need rest, support, and the strength to build back as the air starts to clear.

(The writer worked for nearly 14 years with Kantipur Television. She currently writes a column for Nepali Times. By special arrangement with Sapan)