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Nepal Crown Prince Dipendra brutally gunned down his family after inhaling cocaine and drinking whisky following an ultimatum from his father King Birendra, issued four days before the June 1 massacre to choose between the throne and the woman he loved, the British media reported on Sunday.
After days of wrestling with his dilemma, the Eton-educated 29-year-old prince ran amok on the fateful night killing his father and eight others including his mother Queen Aiswarya.
The reports said King Birendra confronted the prince with a choice between marriage to his girlfriend, which would have excluded him from the succession, and an arranged match with a courtier's daughter he was also seeing.
Quoting a source close to the family, The Sunday Times wrote 'alcohol had been found in his bloodstream when he was treated in hospital after murdering the king, queen and seven other family members.'
Dipendra, who died last Monday, had set his heart on marrying Devyani Rana, 29, the daughter of a leading politician. But Queen Aiswarya objected on the grounds that Devyani's great grandmother had been a court mistress. She nominated 27-year-old Supriya Shah, daughter of an aide-de-camp to Nepal's queen mother, instead.
'Devyani was really the one he wanted,' the newspaper quoted a close friend as having said.
The prince was told if he married Supriya he could maintain Devyani as a mistress, and was said by friends to be distraught after Devyani, whom they described as a modern, sophisticated woman, refused to consider such an arrangement.
A doctor said the cocaine could explain how the prince had managed to revive himself after being taken to the room in a drunken stupor at the end of a family dinner nine days ago. He dressed in military fatigues and returned downstairs with weapons to murder his family.
A report in The Sunday Telegraph, quoted palace officials, said the murdered king's nephew by marriage could be reprimanded for giving his version of the slaughter to the media. Officials have said they want witnesses to speak only to the two palace-appointed investigators.
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