Shantanu was shot in the face on 8 September 2025, in the eastern city of Itahari, when he and some school friends attended their first protest. Six months on, the 18-year-old has become the quiet embodiment of Nepal's generational reckoning: a young man who sought change and instead had his future rewritten by police bullets.
Shantanu Dhakal is a 18 years old student from Nepal who was shot through his left jaw by police using live ammunition during an anti-corruption protest, marking him as one of the youngest victims of a crackdown that would topple a government in a matter of hours. The injury has left him with a shattered jaw, requiring reconstructive surgery that neither he nor his family can afford.The treatment Shantanu requires may not be available in Nepal. And his mother, Premkala, says the compensation so far "is nothing". "He's now disabled," she says of the couple's only son.
The uprising itself was comprehensible:In September 2025, large-scale anti-corruption protests and demonstrations took place all across Nepal, predominantly organized by Generation Z students and young citizens. Also known as "the Gen Z protests", they began parallel to a nationwide ban on numerous social media platforms including YouTube, Facebook, and WhatsApp, and were motivated by the public's frustration with corruption and display of wealth by government officials and their families, particularly through the viral #NepoBaby trend.
What happened on the streets of Kathmandu and provincial cities remains contested.Anil Baniya, one of the protest organizers from Hami Nepal, said the government cracked down on the protesters after some protesters began to climb the walls of the parliament complex and others threw stones. Baniya stated that what began as a peaceful protest was hijacked by "external forces and political party cadres" but that regardless, the government should not have responded to stones being thrown with live ammunition from the armed police.
What is beyond dispute is the force used and its consequences.There were 76 people killed. According to the Nepal Army's official report, of those people, 22 were protesters, 3 were police officers, and 10 were prisoners who were shot to prevent their escape.A BBC investigation has revealed that Nepal's former police chief, Chandra Kuber Khapung, ordered the use of lethal weapons against thousands of unarmed young protesters during the September 8 Gen Z protest. Among the 19 people killed in the capital, Kathmandu, on September 8 last year was a teenager in a school uniform who was shot in the back of the head while walking away from the crowd.
The government's response was swift and destabilising.In the face of mounting violence, and with protesters furious over civilian deaths, Nepal's Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli submitted his resignation on 9 September under military persuasion. In his resignation letter to the President, Oli described the situation as "extraordinary," conceding that his stepping down was necessary to allow a political resolution within the constitutional bounds. A new interim government led by former Chief JusticeSushila Karki was installed on 12 September, making her Nepal's first female prime minister.
What is less clear is whether this institutional reset will translate into justice or systemic change for victims like Shantanu. The interim government has made compensation pledges, buthis mother, Premkala, says the compensation so far "is nothing". "He's now disabled," she says of the couple's only son. "He can't really do physically demanding tasks. See, we are farmers; we toil in the fields. He's now not capable of such work."
Some reform is real.As one of her first steps, she repealed the amendments to the Cybersecurity Act and ordered the release of detained protesters.The government has also established a three-person panel to investigate the violence, due to report within three months. This inquiry must be fully independent, investigate claims of violent infiltration, hold perpetrators to account and lead to reforms to prevent police violence in response to future protests. Yet investigations and elections are not the same as accountability; no one has faced criminal charges so far.
The political challenge is genuine and structural. Nepal's problems predate September 2025.Nepal is one of the world's youngest nations with a median age of 25.3, with youth unemployment reaching 20.8 per cent in 2024, and nearly a third of the population lives and works abroad. Over 76 per cent of households rely on remittances, a grim index of economic stagnation and lost opportunity.
Fresh elections were held this week.A newcomer party, Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), with former rapper Balendra Shah as its main candidate is heading toward a landslide victory in Nepali elections, according to early results on Sunday. Whether a change of government can close the gap between institutional promises and victims' needs remains unclear.The country's future, however, will be decided by the upcoming elections in March 2026 and by whether a disorganised resistance movement can turn its street power into real political change.
For Shantanu, the political drama has less salience than the daily reality of facial reconstruction.The daily, painful ritual of cleaning the temporary skin graft patch on his face endures, as do two questions that circle through his mind: "What happened to me? What will happen to my future?" His case encapsulates the gap between political transition and human restoration, and poses a hard question for Nepal's incoming government: will institutional reform translate into the concrete support that one 18-year-old student needs to rebuild a life?
The Gen Z uprising succeeded in toppling a corrupt administration that had lost the consent of the governed. It forced accountability at the institutional level. But accountability at the human level, for victims like Shantanu, remains an open question. Until it is answered fairly, the work of that uprising remains unfinished.