Was released on bail Tiziano Ronchi, the Italian teacher who was arrested on 5 March in Nepal on charges of trying to steal archaeological finds from a site in Bhaktapur, in the east of the country, a few kilometers from the capital Kathmandu. The Foreign Ministry has announced that Ronchi is fine and that he will have to stay in Nepal pending a decision by the local judicial authorities on his case.
Ronchi is 27 years old and was in Nepal since the end of January on a tourist trip. According to Nepalese media he had been arrested for attempting to steal a statue from the Taleju temple in Bhaktapur (an archaeological site listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site). According to Ronchi’s mother, things would have gone very differently. In an interview al Brescia newspaper he explained that his son had simply “picked up some wooden artifacts from the ground that were found in the midst of debris and cans”, and that he had immediately put them back where they were after two soldiers had taken him back. He had then been searched to check if he had stolen any valuables, but nothing had been found on him except a small knife that he had used for an excursion in the previous days. Shortly after, however, he was arrested.