Nepal, July 17 -- While the immediate catalyst for the tragic death of Ganesh Nepali, a twenty-five-year-old ride-hailing driver who set himself on fire in Kathmandu, was a thousand-rupee fine, the underlying cause was a systemic lack of legal recourse. His self-immolation was a final, desperate protest against a Kafkaesque legal environment where the word of a police officer is absolute, and the right to appeal is non-existent.

The current landscape of law enforcement in Nepal is increasingly defined by the arbitrary use of 'indecent behaviour' charges. As documented in a recent investigative report, the police have transformed this specific provision of the 2017 National Penal Code into a tool for the summary detention of anyone who da...