In retrospect, it was the Maoist storming of Dunai, headquarters of the highland district of Dolpa, that precipitated the peace process. It pushed the government to limited deployment of the Royal Nepal Army against the insurgency, which seems to have pushed the rebel leaders towards the negotiations. However, the talks between the government and the Maoists came to an abrupt end before it even got off to a proper start. The government has now to start all over again if it wants to pick up the pieces of peace that lie scattered all over the negotiating table.
In a sequence of events that seemed to come straight out of pulp fiction, Deputy Prime Minister Ram Chandra Paudel went out of his way to meet Rabindra Shrestha—a central committee member of the underground Maoist party. This 'informal' (but for all one would know, official) meeting was arranged by the self-proclaimed 'independent-communist' and human-rights activist Padma Ratna Tuladhar. Reportedly, Paudel and Shrestha reminisced about their student days, munched biscuits, sipped tea and went their respective ways, literally as well as figuratively as it turned out.
The possibility of talks had raised expectations of an imminent end to violence after five years of fruitless conflict that has already consumed the lives of nearly 2000 citizens, affected the economy, and drained the national momentum. Before they would sit for talks, the Maoists were asking that the whereabouts of their comrades held captive by the government be made public, foremost being Dinesh Sharma. The second condition was that an official negotiator be named by the government. It was a climb-down from the Maoists' earlier posturing that no talks were possible with a government under the leadership of Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala. The extended deadline set by the Maoists was to expire on the afternoon of Friday, 3 November at 3:00.
Events took a dramatic turn when Dinesh Sharma appeared in public at a press conference, minutes before the deadline was to end, hosted under government auspices. There, Sharma announced that he was leaving the violent ways of Maoists and was going out to organise the masses for peaceful politics. It looked too good to be true, and so it turned out to be. As soon as Sharma was freed, he issued another statement insisting that he had been coerced into making his earlier statement by the police who had tortured him into submission.