KATHMANDU: Stripped of his powers and facing the possibility of losing his crown, Nepal's King Gyanendra has fallen prey to acute depression, a media report said.

The king, virtually confined to the palace since April, when mass protests forced him to surrender the absolute power he had seized with the help of the army last year, is being treated for melancholia and depression, the Nepali weekly Ghatana R Bichar reported.

In sharp contrast to 15 months of his direct rule, when he held regular meetings with ministers in the Narayanhity palace in Kathmandu or visited the outer districts to give public audiences, the king now prefers to remain solitary, sitting in the same place for long periods and staring into space blankly.

Sometimes, he is also heard muttering to himself: "What did I do wrong? I was only trying to do people good."

Three doctors - Khagendra Shrestha, Mrigendra Raj Pandey and K. Singh Rana - are conducting regular checkups, the weekly said.

Despite a severe loss of face and making himself immensely unpopular after his authoritarian reign, the king is yet to accept responsibility for the debacle. He still tends to blame others.

His blood pressure is not normal and he is said to have cut down on his drinking. The malady comes on the eve of his 59th birthday on July 7.

Earlier, the royal birthday used to be celebrated lavishly with millions spent on parties at the palace as well as Nepali embassies and consulates abroad. Committees, comprising hundreds of people, used to be formed to oversee the birthday preparations.

This time, according to another weekly, Jana Aastha, the embassies abroad have been told to drop the celebrations.

The royal family is accustomed to going to Britain for medical treatment. Even when the king's overweight daughter, Princess Prerana, wanted a liposuction before her marriage, she went to London.

Queen Komal, who received bullet injuries during the palace massacre in 2001, also goes to London for checkups. The king himself went to London in 2003 for his last health check-up.

However, with Nepal teetering on the verge of an economic collapse and asking for foreign assistance to bail out the economy, it remains to be seen if parliament or the Maoists would approve spending large sums for the royal family's treatment abroad.

In the last four years, after the king began controlling the government, the budget for the royal family was hiked by over six times. Though in the fiscal 2001-02, the government had allocated Nepali Rs.126.3 million for the palace, after seizing direct control last year, King Gyanendra increased the sum further to Rs.751.2 million.

High-level visits abroad during the royal regime alone cost the state Rs.360 million.


(http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1671569.cms)


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