Nepal Cabinet removes police chief Dan Bahadur Karki

The same Cabinet meeting appointed AIG Manoj KC as the new inspector general and opted for a transfer rather than an outright dismissal because a direct removal was likely to invite legal complications, OnlineKhabar reported. The decision was taken under Prime Minister Balendra Shah, whose Rastriya Swatantra Party won more than two-thirds of the 165 directly elected seats in March 2026, Al Jazeera reported.

Karki was appointed inspector general by the interim government led by Sushila Karki on 10 November 2025 and took office on 12 November, OnlineKhabar reported. His tenure of around a year was marked by several controversies.

He faced allegations of irregularities in the procurement of uniforms for election police, and the government questioned his command and control, the outlet reported. He was also criticised for allegedly running the police command in line with instructions from people close to the prime minister.

In the week before the decision, police were deployed to media offices and journalists' homes, leading to arrests and detentions, OnlineKhabar reported. It later emerged that Karki had allegedly ordered the operations at the direction of individuals in the Prime Minister's Secretariat. Courts subsequently ruled that some of the arrests were illegal.

His role in the 2025 protests

Karki was not police chief during the September 2025 Gen Z crackdown. On 9 September 2025, the second day of the protests, he was in charge of the Kathmandu Valley command, OnlineKhabar reported. Human Rights Watch said groups of people, some apparently not linked to the protests, set fire to government buildings, assaulted politicians and journalists, and attacked schools, businesses and media companies that day.

The lethal force came a day earlier. Human Rights Watch found that police fired indiscriminately on protesters over three hours on 8 September 2025, killing 17 people in Kathmandu who had been demonstrating against corruption and a social media ban imposed four days earlier. That figure covers the capital on one day only. CIVICUS said 19 people died that day and at least 76 overall. The interim government's judicial commission is investigating at least 76 deaths nationwide over the two days, around 47 of them in Kathmandu, including three policemen, Human Rights Watch said. The ban had covered 26 social media sites, Al Jazeera reported.

What the change means

The Cabinet decision puts KC in charge of the police force. Karki, who had led it for around a year, moves to the Prime Minister's Office in an advisory role, the same office whose Secretariat he was accused of taking direction from.