Kathmandu, July 13 -- A heartbreaking video circulating on social media platforms since Saturday morning captured the agony of displaced squatter children in Kathmandu. In the footage, nine-year-old Bishwanath Gurung stands shivering in a rain-soaked t-shirt and trousers. His bare feet are caked in thick mud, his eyes red and swollen from crying, as his small hands desperately clutch a tattered bag containing his only remaining worldly possessions.

Bishwanath is one of the scores of children left effectively homeless following the government's aggressive demolition of a squatter settlement in Shantinagar on April 24. Alongside his grandmother Menuka Gurung, the young boy was forcibly relocated to the Radha Swami Satsang holding centre in...