Kathmandu, June 20 -- On a Monday morning in mid-June, officials from the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority received an unusual summons: come to Singha Durbar. The request came from the Prime Minister's secretariat, where Chief Secretary Suman Aryal helped coordinate the meeting.

Before complying, Chief Commissioner Prem Kumar Rai and senior CIAA officials held an internal discussion about whether it was appropriate for a constitutional body conducting an active investigation to explain its work to the executive branch. They concluded it was not, but went anyway.

What followed over the next several hours would raise serious questions about executive overreach, the independence of Nepal's constitutional bodies, and t...