Slain Nepali hostage Bipin Joshi was mourned by his loved ones in a traditional Hindu cremation ceremony in his hometown of Kanchanpur on Tuesday, two years after he was kidnapped from Israel and slain in captivity in Gaza.

Joshi’s remains arrived in Nepal on Monday, a week after his body was returned to Israel by Hamas as part of a ceasefire deal. Joshi, an agricultural student who had arrived in Israel in September 2023 at age 23, was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists from Kibbutz Alumim on October 7, 2023, and killed in captivity.

Until the return of his body last week, Joshi’s fate had remained unclear, though Israeli authorities had expressed grave concern after no sign of life had been received from him since very early in the war. After his body was returned, the IDF said that its initial estimation was that he was “murdered in captivity in the first months of the war,” but that it had not made a final determination.

“Tihar is the festival of lights, but it will always be a reminder of darkness for us,” Kishor Joshi, his cousin, told The........

© The Times of Israel