A private radio channel, Himalayan Broadcasting Corp,...

A private radio channel, Himalayan Broadcasting Corp, reported that the two Nepalese sentenced to death in China for trying to smuggle out arms and explosives from Tibet to Nepal were Maoists. Nepal's foreign ministry said it had no immediate information about the identity of the four men and urged the Chinese government to reconsider the death verdict. The men had been arrested from a house in Khasa town on the Nepal-Tibet border where they had reportedly hidden large quantities of Chinese-made pistols and explosives. According to the report, one of the men was Hiralal Shrestha, also known as Ananda, following the Maoist custom of assuming "action" names to keep their identities secret. The other had been identified as Gyaltzen Sherpa, the report said. Nepal's foreign ministry could not confirm the report.