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Eton schoolmates remember playboy prince

Shyam Bhatia
India Abroad Correspondent in London

As the Nepalese mourn their murdered royal family, English contemporaries of Crown Prince Dipendra have been sharing contradictory memories of the once friendly young man who was transformed one night into a killer.

Tom Holden, Dipendra's house master at Britain's elite Eton College, says the Nepalese crown prince's behaviour on Friday night, when he shot dead his father, mother and several close relatives, was totally out of character.

But Holden's assessment is at variance with Dipendra's schoolboy contemporaries who revealed his dark side in interviews with India Abroad.

"Recent events seem totally out of character," Holden said on Saturday. "Everyone is devastated. Prince Dipendra left Eton in July 1990 with three A-levels. He wrote after he left that he always cherished his years at Eton with a great sense of pride and achievement.

"I had remained in touch with both the prince and the king. His Majesty was my pupil as well and he sent the prince to be in my house."

But Dipendra's classmates at Eton painted a less than flattering image of the hard-drinking, sexually precocious royal teenager who telephoned the Nepalese ambassador in London and asked him to arrange for his room at school to be redecorated at the embassy's expense.

One Eton contemporary told India Abroad how Dipendra was always "flashing his money about" and getting into trouble for smoking and drinking. Within a week of his arrival, aged 16, the school authorities chastised him for drinking whisky.

He was also a karate expert who would participate in mock fights with friends in the school corridors. He eventually became head of Eton's martial arts society.

The drinking and fighting repeatedly brought him to the attention of the school authorities. The former classmate recalled, "He was certainly in trouble and got away with it because of who he was. His father kept contributing to things like a new church roof, that kind of thing. Giving money, you know, to build a new library -- that kind of thing.

"He was a big fat guy with a Gurkha-type haircut. It was a funny haircut, like one of those close-cut Hare Krishna-type haircuts. It was outlawed at Eton, but he was allowed to have it."

Another contemporary, political consultant Danial Kruger, remembered Dipendra as a "strong, intimidating" character without much of a sense of humour. "I once teased him when he was doing skipping exercises and he lifted me off the ground with my jaw," Kruger recalled.

Dipendra's English friends trying to make sense of his murderous outburst said he had a mad streak. A few said that they would not be surprised if a drug habit he acquired at Eton caused him to go completely off the rails.

Still others said his thwarted love for Devyani Rana, a niece of Indian politician Madhavrao Scindia, offered the only explanation for his action in killing his parents and siblings before turning the gun on himself.

Another Eton contemporary, Oliver Poole, told a British Sunday newspaper that Dipendra had little hesitation in revealing his experiences with the other sex. "Not only did he have his eye on almost every girl that appeared in town," said Poole, "but his friends knew all there was to know about the young Nepalese girls in the palace."

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