KATHMANDU, May 25: Religious activists crippled a Nepalese border town Thursday in protest against the government’s decision to end the nation’s status as the world’s last Hindu kingdom, police said.

Police said protesters blocked roads with burning tyres and called a general strike in Birgunj with demonstrators travelling from the capital Kathmandu and neighbouring India to join in.

“All the shops, businesses and educational institutions closed their shutters and the highways were deserted in Birgunj,” the town’s police chief Bir Bahadur Rana said.

“The activists have called for a general strike today and have begun obstructing the traffic by burning tyres.”

Demonstrators also blocked roads on Wednesday with burning tyres, closed shops and ransacked a newspaper van before torching its contents because it backed the new government’s move to change Nepal into a secular state.

The police chief said protests had been growing for several days in the town, 275 kilometres south of Kathmandu, with property including a dental hospital vandalised.

A smaller protest was held in Kathmandu on Thursday with 100 people, including some 20 Hindu holy men, blocking a road near parliament. They chanted “The Hindu nation cannot be destroyed,” waved banners and blew on conch shells.

Gita Prasai, a housewife and one of the demonstrators, said: “Hinduism has not been a problem for others to practise their religions, so Nepal must be a Hindu kingdom.”—AFP