“He will leave Tokyo along with his wife and two daughters on a Thai Airways flight at 4:55 Friday afternoon,” said Rajan Pradhananga of the Justice for Govinda-Innocence Advocacy Group Japan set up mostly by Japanese citizens who have from the beginning stood for him. 

 

Pradhananga revealed that deported Mainali would be allowed to return to Japan if needed as per the travel documents despite the Japanese Immigration law prohibiting a deported person from entering the country for 10 years. 

 

Pradhananga said he and three Japanese members of the advocacy group would come to Kathmandu with Mainali. Meanwhile, the Nepali Embassy acknowledged the efforts made by the advocacy group to seek a retrial for Mainali and expressed gratitude to the group amidst a function at the embassy. 

 

The immigration bureau had decided to deport Mainali on Monday and he was awaiting documents from Nepali Embassy in Japan. Mainali was released from the prison and sent to an immigration facility in Yokohama after the High Court order on Thursday as he was first arrested for overstaying in 1997 before being charged with the murder of 39-year-old Yasuko Watanabe, a female employee of Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO). 

 

Mainali, who left Nepal for Japan in 1994, worked as a waiter in Tokyo until police arrested him in March, 1997 for overstaying and then charged him with murdering Watanabe, who moonlighted as a prostitute and was killed on March 8, 1997. 

 

The district court had acquitted him but the prosecution, presenting selective evidence, appealed to the Tokyo High Court, which found him guilty and jailed him for life based on circumstantial evidence, deeming that a third party could not conceivably have entered the murder victim´s room.