KATMANDU, Nepal — A survivor gave the first eyewitness account of the massacre of Nepal's royal family Thursday, describing how the intoxicated crown prince went on a shooting spree.
Dr. Rajiv Raj Shahi said the slaughter would have been worse if not for Prince Paras Shah, the son of the new king, who saved several lives as Crown Prince Dipendra slew his parents, brother and sister and five other relatives before turning the gun on himself.
"It was the then-Crown Prince Dipendra who carried out the murders," Shahi said. "He was just a murderer."
Shahi — the son-in-law of Prince Dhirendra, a brother of the slain King Birendra — was the first witness to publicly describe the slaughter Friday night, which has stunned this impoverished Himalayan nation.
The slaying sparked riots in the streets of the capital over the weekend, amid disbelief among some Nepalese that the crown prince committed the massacre. Their skepticism that the truth would ever be told was fueled when Birendra's unpopular successor, his brother King Gyanendra, initially said the shooting was "accidental."
Shahi's description mirrored earlier second-hand accounts of how a drunken Dipendra, thrown out of a palace gathering after misbehaving, returned to the party with an assault rifle and began shooting. Shahi said the shooting lasted 1 1/2 minutes.
During the party, the 29-year-old Dipendra appeared "really drunk" and began to "stammer and quarrel," said Shahi.
"It was a family gathering, so we decided to escort him away." Shahi, Paras Shah and Dipendra's younger brother Prince Nirajan helped him upstairs to his bedroom.
Shahi, whose head was shaven in a traditional Hindu sign of mourning, narrated the sequence of the slaughter, using a marker and a sketch of the palace, as he spoke to journalists at the hospital where he was visiting four wounded royals.
"About 9 p.m. I heard a burst of gunfire. I thought it was somebody playing a prank," Shahi recounted. "There was shouting, and I heard someone say, 'His Majesty has been shot.'"
Shahi, a military doctor, said that he was at the northern end of the hall when the shooting began. The king fell near a billiards table at the southern end.
"Being a doctor, I ran toward His Majesty. I took off my coat and pressed it against his neck where he was bleeding," Shahi said. "(The king) said, 'I have been shot in the stomach also.' "
Shahi said his father-in-law, Dhirendra, tried to stop the crown prince. "He was shot at point-blank range on his chest," Shahi said. Dhirendra died in the hospital Monday.
The crown prince, Shahi said, moved back and forth between the rooms and shot three more people. He said the king's daughter, Princess Shruti, and sister, Princess Shobhi, ran to the king's side.
Dipendra shot the two princesses and his father again, Shahi said. "I jumped to the side to save myself." Shruti was killed, while Shobhi survived with gunshot wounds.
The crown prince then turned to the other end of the hall where Paras Shah was standing with some female cousins, Shahi said. Shahi declined to say what Paras — who is the son of the new King Gyanendra and likely to become the next crown prince — did to save the lives of some royals. Other witnesses have said that he pushed several women under a table.
Shahi said Dipendra then shot three more people.
Shahi said that he escaped through a window to call for help, so he didn't see the next round of shooting.
"But from what I gathered, Queen Aiswarya went to confront the crown prince with what he had done," Shahi said. He raised the gun at his mother.
"Prince Nirajan came in the center to save his mother. He was shot in the back," Shahi said. Earlier accounts said Dipendra killed his mother and brother in a garden outside the main room.
Shahi said others told him that Dipendra then stood on a footbridge, over a stream — some distance away from the bodies of the queen and Nirajan — and shot himself in the head.
"What motivated him, I am not sure," Shahi said.
Palace sources told The Associated Press that the crown prince and his mother had sharp words that night over the young woman that Dipendra wanted to marry, Devyani Rana, the daughter of a prominent Nepali businessman and granddaughter of an Indian maharaja.
Witnesses said the king and queen told Dipendra he could marry Rana but if he did so, his brother Nirajan would take his place as crown prince, according to a member of the State Council, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A probe ordered by King Gyanendra has been stalled for several days because the opposition leader of Parliament called the king's order unconstitutional and quit the commission of inquiry, which now was set to begin Friday and end Sunday.
Along with Dipendra, those killed in the massacre were the king and queen, Dipendra's brother and sister, two sisters and a brother-in-law of the king, and a brother and cousin of the king.