After the shock of Crown Prince Dipendra's role in the killings, the focus has shifted to King Gyanendra's 30-year-old son, Prince Paras. Katmandu is rife with stories of the prince's careening through narrow streets in a Japanese four-wheel-drive luxury vehicle, injuring or killing several people -- and remaining immune to prosecution. The most serious case, confirmed by two government ministers and by an ambassador with access to a Western intelligence report, resulted in the death of a popular sitar player last fall.

According to these accounts, Prince Paras became embroiled in an altercation over a waitress at a nightclub attached to a hotel in which his father is a major shareholder. The sitar player, Pravid Gurung, joined other employees in demanding that the prince leave the waitress alone. When Mr. Gurung left the nightclub, he was pursued and knocked off his motorcycle by Prince Paras, who then put his vehicle in reverse and ran over Mr. Gurung before driving off. Later, 600,000 Nepalese signed a petition to King Birendra demanding action against the prince, but Paras was never touched.

Now, Prince Paras is next in line to the throne. His father, King Gyanendra, apparently wary of provoking popular feeling, has so far avoided naming him formally as crown prince. When Parliament was re-convened a month after the palace killings, Prince Paras was notably absent. At the Katmandu nightspots he frequented before the massacre, he has been a no-show as well ...

"We know now that we had a crown prince who was a drinker and a drug user, that we have a new king who was a smuggler, that his son is a killer, and that we have a government that is so corrupt that it is incapable of effective action."