Kathmandu: Six months after a popular uprising forced Nepal's King Gyanendra to relinquish power, the Maoists are on top of the world, enjoying unprecedented media attention and impunity.
 
Top Maoist leaders are basking in national and international media attention and flying around the country in style.
 
Their top leader, Prachanda, which means "the fierce one," was picked up from Kathmandu airport Sunday in Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala's official car and driven to the premier's residence for meetings over the agenda of Monday's top-level meeting of the ruling seven-party alliance (SPA) and Maoist leaders.
 
The spreading influence of the Maoists came after the rebels backed the political opposition as it led mass protests throughout the country against the king.

A new opportunity was then seen in Nepal and by the international community to end the decade-long conflict that has killed more than 13,000 people, leading them to court the Maoists to try to persuade the guerrillas to lay down their arms and join the democratic political process.
 
The Maoist behaviour since then, however, has terrified Kathmandu Valley residents.

"Once they come and ask for food and shelter, we dare not say no, and we have to give them what they want even if we don't have enough," a small business owner in Lalitpur near the capital said.
 
The Maoists have been collecting taxes and other fees from people across the country. They have not even spared some of the trekkers in the Himalayan region, and they are doing so without any attempt by the government to stop them.
 
A senior Nepalese industrialist and businessman, Mahesh Pradhan, said, "How can we work with the Maoists dictating terms? Most industries are either closed or are not operating to their capacity because of the Maoist donation collection drive.
 
"It is not only the donations," he said.

"The Maoists are also collecting what they call taxes. How can we survive when there are two governments, each seeking its own pound of flesh?" he said.
 
Another industrialist who did not want to be named said the Maoist-affiliated labour unions were making such outlandish demands that "if we agree to them, we will have to sell our property and flee the country".
 
Maoist leader and spokesman Krishna Bahadur Mahara dismissed all allegations of Maoist excesses and pointed out that the Maoists, who are in control of most of rural Nepal, were not merely a political party but an organization that has been running a parallel government.
 
"The donation drive will cease once we join the interim Government," he said.

There is a feeling that all sides were today wooing the Maoists, whom successive Nepali governments had labelled 'terrorists'.
 
"I shudder to think what the Maoists will do once they join the government," said Ram Shanker Lal, a 69-year-old retired civil servant.

"Even when out of government, they have been able to install so much fear in us and force us to do what they want," he said.

With the government doing nothing to protect its citizens from the Maoist excesses, which include abductions of children for military training and levying their own arbitrary taxes on almost anything, the Maoists in Nepal never had it so good.