Kathmandu, Aug. 7: The Nepal army has sacked two women soldiers, charging them with being lesbians.

According to gay rights organisation Blue Diamond Society (BDS), the women were fired after a court martial found them guilty of “indiscipline” last month. Before the trial, they were detained and kept in solitary confinement for two months.

BDS president Sunil Pant told The Telegraph here that the Nepal army arrested the two women after they were found in the same room. The women claimed that they were reading when some male soldiers barged into their room and accused them of being lesbians.

According to a Reuters report quoting the Kathmandu Post newspaper, the women were fired after being caught in bed together. Army spokesman Brigadier General Ramindra Chhetri would not comment on the allegation but a soldier familiar with the case said, on condition of anonymity, that the report was correct.

Pant said Nepal’s constitution does not allow any form of discrimination in the government. “It doesn’t matter if the two women are lesbians. Their rights are protected by the Constitution,” he said.

The gay rights activist said one of the soldiers, who worked as a physical training instructor at a Nepal army unit in Bhaktapur, was accused of being a transsexual. “Her male colleagues accused her of being a lesbian on the grounds that she was flat-chested,” he said, adding: “They also envied her as she outperformed them in all outdoor physical activity.”

Pant said the soldier was with a 19-year-old second lieutenant trainee and a third roommate when the soldiers barged into their room. “The army ignored the testimony of the third inmate who said that the two were merely reading a book together,” he added.

However, Chhetri denied that there was any discrimination or harassment in the sacking. He said the women were fired from the army on disciplinary grounds. “I have nothing more to say,” the spokesman added.

However, a senior army official said: “Army needs sound personnel, not someone who is mentally weak and lacks discipline. So they have been expelled from their jobs.”

The women were court-martialled on disciplinary grounds, he said, adding: “How can a senior staff of the army have an illicit relationship with her junior?”

According to eminent lawyer and chairwoman of the Forum for Women Law and Development, Sapna Malla Pradhan, Nepal’s Constitution guarantees non-discrimination on the basis of sex or sexual orientation.

“It’s against international law to kick staff out on the basis of sexual orientation,” she said.

Pradhan said Nepal was also a party to the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, which says no state party has the right to discriminate on the basis of sex.

Courts shut

Courts across Nepal were shut today as a strike by court officials demanding an investigation into alleged irregularities by a senior supreme court clerk spread countrywide.