Nepal's Maoists have entered the political mainstream

Amid the atmosphere of hope, they found the country's still fragile peace could be under threat from violent separatist splinter groups and that many questions from 10 years of civil conflict remain unanswered.

Asmita says she is not fond of carrying weapons and killing people but will "do it as history requires, bringing about a change in the society".

Although only 20-years-old she is already familiar with doing both through her role as a cadre with the second division of the Ram Briksh brigade of the Communist party of Nepal, better known as Maoists.

Asmita estimates she has killed between 20 and 25 people, but at her camp near the town of Janakpur several hundred kilometres from the capital, Kathmandu, in the country's southeastern Terai plains she tells Al Jazeera that she and her comrades are now "ready to lay down arms" for the Nepali people.

That moment may now be close as the Maoists come in from the cold both politically and physically and take up their positions in Nepal's new 330-member interim parliament.

Terai threat

The rebels struck a deal in November with the multi-party government that saw a cessation of hostilities in the Himalayan kingdom thus ending a conflict that has so far claimed 13,000 lives.

The peace accord saw the former rebels led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal, commonly known as Prachanda, agree to lay down their weapons in return for a promise by Girija Prasad Koirala, the Nepali prime minister, to name them in an interim government.

Now 84 former rebels have taken their seats alongside those they once fought in an  administration meant to oversee elections for an assembly that will prepare a new constitution and decide the future of the monarchy, which the Maoists want abolished.

Goit openly admits his group murdered Krishna Srestha

But, as unarmed UN officials are deployed across the country to monitor the handover of weapons from both sides, not everyone is excited by the prospect of a "new" Nepal.

At a secret location in an Indian town just over the border from southeast Nepal, Jai Krishna Goit emerges from the shadows to give his first ever television interview.

Goit is a former Maoist and leader of Janatantrik Terai Mutik Morcha (JTMM), which translates as the People's Terai Liberation Front, a deadly splinter group that he established in 2004.

One of JTMM's main political aims is an independent state for the Madhesis, the people of the Terai, the vast southern plains that stretch across Nepal.

Clad head to toe so he cannot be identified, Goit has accused the Maoists of betraying the Madhesis people.

Political killing
 
His followers and members of another splinter of the JTMM have recently undertaken an increasing number of attacks in regions of the Terai, and Goit says he will fight all those who threaten his people.

"The people of Terai will drive them out," he says. "Every child in Terai will fight against the army and the PLA and is willing to become a martyr."

On September 23 Krishna Srestha, a Nepalese parliamentarian, was shot dead by Goit's men in the Siraha district of Terai.

A mainstream political assassination is something the Maoists have yet to commit in 12 years of armed resistance, but Goit openly admits to the murder.

"We do not wish to take military action against someone, but we are compelled," he says and cites recent violence in the Terai town of Nepalgunj as a reason why the Madhesis feel left behind by the "new Nepal" need to protect themselves.

Goit and the JTMM want an independent state in the Terai plains

In an attack that was ethnically rather than politically motivated, gangs from the hills to the north of the town ransacked and torched shops while police looked on.

"Nepalgunj is proof to my point," says Goit, "that unless the Terai is independent, Madhesis will be deprived of their economic, political, cultural, linguistic or any rights. When the Madhesis houses were burnt down they could not find justice ... how will they secure our rights? Elections will not bring solutions."
 
Kiran Dwyer of the UN says the situation in Terai:"Is a tinder box that could spiral out of control," but after an exhausting journey back to Kathmandu Al Jazeera found the Maoist leader unperturbed by the threat of the JTMM and other disaffected groups.