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Maina’s uncle, who lives nearby, recalls the day of the abduction. “They beat her in the streets and took her away blindfolded,” he says. “The soldiers claimed that Maina was a Maoist and had used her pressure cooker as a bomb to blow up another woman. But Maina didn’t even have a pressure cooker.”

The Nepalese Army is a shadowy affair. Largely a law unto itself, the military enjoys impunity for almost all its actions. Despite being responsible for hundreds of disappearances and cases of torture during Nepal’s civil war, no army officers have been convicted and sentenced for human rights abuses.

The OHCHR has the right to access and interview all prisoners held in Nepal to ensure they are arrested and treated in accordance with the law - not tortured and murdered like Maina. But standards are hard to enforce. Even the police have difficulty investigating and prosecuting cases against army personnel, and they are often unwilling to accept complaints.

At Maina’s former school, her desk is empty. For her mother, schoolgirls are a distressing reminder of what she has lost. Whenever one of Maina’s age walks by, she says she wants to cry.

In 2007, the Supreme Court ordered the government to ciminalise enforced disappearances in line with the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance and to establish a high-level committee of inquiry into existing cases. The OHCHR is advising the government on this.

For Maina, it is too late; but it is not too late to press for justice for her family.