On 1 February 2005, the only challenger to Prachanda's supreme position and power was locked up, under armed Maoist guards, inside a small mud house in an isolated corner of Lawang village. In a poorly-lit and unheated room, the deputy leader of the Maoists, Baburam Bhattarai lay on a small bed, reading. Detained with him was his wife Hisila Yami, who was also a Maoist leader. She appeared much stronger than her intellectual husband, and was frustrated at not being allowed to go outside. Incarcerated because of her husband's actions, she considered herself a sati of the twenty-first century.

Baburam Bhattarai was arrested for writing an article that had been published in the premier national broadsheet Kantipur (Daily) before the party had a chance to debate its content. Bhattarai's article, “Princely Tendency and Democracy”, was a follow-up to another shrewdly analysed article, “Difference between Democracy and Monarchy”, by Devendra Raj Pandey, a civil society activist. Bhattarai had written: