By Sudeshna Sarkar

After losing his crown and being turned out of the palace, Nepal’s dethroned king Gyanendra continues to face demands for more.

A Nepali farmer is laying claim to the dozens of cows herded in the former Narayanhity royal palace, saying they were promised to him.

Just two weeks after being officially proclaimed a republic, Nepal is discovering new things about the former palace that was once prohibited land for the government.

The secretive walls were found to enclose a hidden underground tunnel and a 91-year-old woman, forgotten by the world and kept hidden since she became the mistress of the deposed king’s grandfather, Tribhuvan.

Farmer Gokul Karki says the sprawling pink palace, famed for its priceless statues and chandeliers, has about 80 cows tethered on its premises that rightfully belonged to a scion of Nepal’s aristocracy, Akhanda Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana.

Karki claims Rana kept the flock on his own land in the Budanilkantha area, famed for its temple of a Hindu god that was shunned by the former kings due to a myth that to gaze upon its face would bring disaster on the dynasty.

After Rana fell ill and could not tend the flock, Karki says he was promised the lot but was given only one while the rest were driven off to Narayanhity.

"The cows that were promised to me were taken to the palace due to a conspiracy," Karki told Nepal’s official media Sunday.

Karki says Rana’s cows are easily identifiable by the long iron chains around their necks that weigh nearly three kilograms.

Though the farmer took his grievance to the council of royal advisors – a body that was dissolved after the fall of king Gyanendra’s government in 2006 – he did not get any redress.

Until two years ago, Nepal was a Hindu kingdom where the cow was regarded as a holy animal and their slaughter was banned.

The royal palace has been made a national museum, open to the public.