Nepal Police say 124 died and 2,988 were hurt in Dashain road accidents
Nearly 3,000 were hurt in 1,339 crashes, and police in Koshi and Sudurpaschim say their provinces saw more accidents than last year.
Nepal Police counted 124 deaths and 2,988 injuries from 1,339 road accidents during this year's Dashain holiday, Nepal Press reported on Monday, October 26, citing Deputy Inspector General Abinarayan Kafle, the force's central spokesperson. The toll covers the roughly two week window from Asoj 25 to Kartik 8 on the Nepali calendar, the period when Nepalis travel home for Dashain, the country's largest Hindu festival.
If you or your family travelled home for Dashain, this toll is the only public national measure of how risky those roads were this year. In Koshi and Sudurpaschim, police counted more crashes than last year but fewer deaths, OnlineKhabar reported.
Outside Kathmandu, two provincial police offices published their own Dashain figures. The Nepal Police Highway Safety and Traffic Management Office in Itahari said Koshi Province recorded 413 accidents and 22 deaths this Dashain, more accidents than last year's 291, though fewer deaths than last year's 26, OnlineKhabar reported. Morang district alone saw 170 of those accidents, the most of any district in the province. In Sunsari district, 87 accidents killed 10 people and injured 156, while police booked 2,457 vehicles for breaking traffic rules across the province and collected NPR 2.529 million, about $19,000, in fines, OnlineKhabar reported.
In Sudurpaschim Province, the provincial traffic police office in Attariya told OnlineKhabar that 152 accidents from Ghatasthapana to Friday during this Dashain alone killed six people and injured 243. Police counted 122 vehicles in accidents across last year's Dashain to Chhath period, which killed 23 and injured 253, OnlineKhabar reported. This year's Dashain alone already topped last year's longer count. OnlineKhabar wrote that the traffic police data shows controlling festival crashes is becoming more challenging.
OnlineKhabar also wrote that the fall in deaths, despite more accidents, is being seen as a positive.
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Sources
- Nepal Press · Original Nepal Police toll of deaths, injuries and accidents from Deputy Inspector General Abinarayan Kafle's briefing
- OnlineKhabar English · Koshi Province's accident, death and enforcement figures this Dashain, compared with last year
- OnlineKhabar English · Sudurpaschim Province's accident and death figures this Dashain, compared with last year's longer holiday window
Editorial review record
Why it ran today
- ranking judge 1: ranked #1 with 72/100. A fresh official Nepal Police count, given by spokesperson DIG Abinarayan Kafle and carried by five outlets, on a safety risk nearly every family met on the roads this month. The desk can add Khabarhub's province, vehicle and year-on-year figures, 1,339 crashes against 1,492 last Dashain. Weakest dimension is share identity: it is a statistic with no named family.
- ranking judge 2: ranked #1 with 72/100. Confirmed. It is a fresh official Nepal Police count from spokesperson DIG Abinarayan Kafle, released Oct 26 and carried by Nagarik, Ratopati, Khabarhub and Nepal Press, on a road risk nearly every family faced this month. The desk can add Khabarhub's province, vehicle and year on year figures. Weakest dimension is share identity, because there is no named family.
What the desk dug up
- The numbers. The national 'accidents fell' framing (1,339 crashes this Dashain versus 1,492 last year) does not hold province by province: Koshi Province's own traffic office recorded more crashes this year (413, up from 291), and Sudurpaschim's Dashain-only crash count (152) already exceeds the entirety of last year's longer Dashain-to-Chhath window (122). [OnlineKhabar English] [OnlineKhabar English]
Validation
1 red team round, 2 revisions. Decision: approved.
- accuracy86
- relevance78
- defensibility88
- reach56
Judge 1: The headline, card, take and caption all hang on 124 against 134. That rests on a Nepal Press page that returned 403, and the fetched Koshi page shows police often report children inside the men and women counts, so the 134 must be checked against the original Nepali wording before it runs. The provincial figures check out against OnlineKhabar, but the piece misattributes one interpretation, contradicts itself on the 'only measure' line, and gives the reader no stake in the hook. All of this is fixable in one pass.
Judge 2: All seven edits judge 2 ordered are in version 5: the card, hook, trigger, paragraph 2, subheadings, closing line and take. The unsourced doubt about the national count is gone, and every Koshi and Sudurpaschim figure matches the fetched OnlineKhabar pages word for word. One limit remains: the national toll rests on Nepal Press, whose page returned HTTP 403, and my search for it failed, so I could not re-check it. The ranking judges report that five outlets carried it, and the piece credits it to Nepal Police via Nepal Press throughout. The body runs a little under 350 words and virality is below the newsroom target, but with no revisions left, neither justifies rejecting an accurate, fully credited safety story.
The complete record, including the advocate, skeptic, red team and defence arguments, is kept by the newsroom.
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