Kathmandu, June 2 -- At around 1:30 pm on June 20, 1985, a bomb went off at the entrance gate of the National Panchayat building's gallery meeting room inside Singha Durbar. The prime accused behind the blast was Ram Raja Prasad Singh, a prominent politician campaigning against the party-less Panchayat system.

Nearly two months later, on August 18, the Panchayat government published the Destructive Crimes (Special Control and Punishment) Act, 1985, in the Nepal Gazette. This statute was formulated not merely to deter future offences; its section 11, sub-section 2 specifically mandated that the law would apply retrospectively to incidents that had happened before its enactment.

"In relation to any destructive crime committed prior to the...