According to the army, Sadhduram Devkota, 27, (alias Prashant) Sunday hanged himself in an army cell in Balaju, on the outskirts of Kathmandu.

Prashant was arrested on November 4 in Kathmandu and had been working as Kathmandu Valley coordinator in charge of Maoist operations in the Nepalese capital, the army said.

"Devkota did not commit suicide but was murdered while in army detention," Maoist spokesman Prabhakiran, who uses one name, said in a press statement.

"After recording the necessary information from Prashant, he was killed and we vow to take revenge," Prabhakiran said.

The army disputed the rebels' allegation.

"Prashant committed suicide by hanging himself in the military barracks with shoelaces around 3:45 pm (local time) Sunday," Royal Nepal Army Lieutenant Colonel Dhruva Kumar Shah said.

He said an autopsy would be carried but did not say when.

Shah said Prashant had expressed regret about the Maoists, who have been fighting since February 1996 to establish a communist republic.

"He was cooperating with us during interrogation but he was a disillusioned man, as he had already lost his near and dear ones in clashes with security forces," Shah said.

"He used to say he would be killed by the Maoists once he was freed," he said, adding Prashant wanted to meet the media to expose Maoist atrocities.

Human rights groups accuse both the security forces and the rebels of committing atrocities in the conflict which has claimed more than 11,000 lives.

Last week, a UN official, noting complaints of hundreds of disappearances in Nepal, urged the army to stop detaining people incommunicado and to give the national human rights commission access to prisons.

"A complete prohibition of incommunicado detention in army barracks must be enforced," Stephen J. Toope, chairman of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, had told a press conference.

Toope and three colleagues came to Nepal last week to investigate reports by human rights groups that hundreds of people have disappeared since Maoist rebels launched their bid to topple the monarchy.

Toope said the army's existing human rights directives should be honoured in order to stop disappearances.

He said Nepal's rights commission should have "unhindered access to all places of detention without prior notification or permission."

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