Nepali political leaders who managed to escape to New Delhi fearing hostile action by King Gyanendra's administration, have alleged that Nepali military was illegally detaining and torturing leaders back home.

The allegation from the leaders-on-exile assumes significance as it came hours before new Nepali Foreign Minister Ramesh Nath Pandey arrives in New Delhi.  Pandely's visit would be the first high-level visit since King Gyanendra seized power and suspended civil rights last month.

The international community, including India, is mounting pressure on King Gyanendra to restore democracy in the Himalayan kingdom.  But, Nepal has so far avoided such pressure tactics.

Rambaran Yadav, senior leader in Koirala's Nepali Congress and a former health minister, said the military was on rampage and many of their leaders were being picked up and beaten mercilessly.

Yadav said three prominent pro-democracy activists in Jhapa in the country's eastern belt, Sudhir Shiva Koti and Udhav Thapa, both of the Nepali Congress, and a regional trade union leader Deepak Taman were tortured nearly to death by armymen.

"All of the three leaders were taken into a military camp, laid down on a trench and beaten badly by the armymen with ice cold water being poured over them all through.  After three days when the CDO (Chief District Officer) intervened, they were released.  The men were beaten nearly to death.  The military is torturing people and we have no control over anything.  Even five to 10 people gathering at a place are arrested and tortured," Yadav said in an interview in New Delhi.

Mahant Thakur, Nepal's former information minister, who also fled to India last week, added that it was not just the politicians but common people as well who are bearing the brunt of army atrocities.

The soldiers, he said, often barge into homes and misbehave with women and urged the Indian government, which has suspended all military aid to Nepal since the royal coup, should convey a strong message to the visiting foreign minister.

Thakur added: "The people over there are in great difficulty.  They are cut off from the world, they have no communication even with their own relations, cannot move out of their own homes.  The security men barge into people's home without permission and misbehave and beat them up.  And as for the political leaders, the establishment simply cannot stand them.  Every kind of liberty is restricted and as our leader Girija Prasad Koirala has said entire Nepal is captive.  The way the foreign minister of such a country should be treated, I urge the government of India to treat the visiting foreign minister in the same vein."

Dozens of Nepali political activists, including heads of various mainstream political parties, have been in detention or under house arrest since Gyanendra's Feb. 1 power grab.  Many others have fled to safer pastures in India.

Senior officials said the term of house arrest for six opposition leaders - including former prime ministers Sher Bahadur Deuba and Girija Prasad Koirala - had been extended, in a move analysts say, might have been aimed at muting dissent and foiling possible popular protests against the king.

King Gyanendra, meanwhile, says that his decision to seize power was aimed at crushing an increasingly bloody anti-monarchy Maoist revolt in which more than 11,000 people have been killed in nine years.  (ANI)