Gopal Das Shrestha (1930–1998) (), a prominent journalist, created the history of English journalism in Nepal. He published and edited the first English daily newspaper The Commoner on 15 July 1956 from Kathmandu. He was an influential intellectual, a remarkable compelling writer and a creative thinker. Early years Born on 21 May 1930 to a businessman Chandra Das Shrestha and Dwarika Devi Shrestha in Calcutta (Kolkata), the then capital city of colonial British India, Shrestha did his early schooling in Calcutta. When the World War II broke out in 1939, the family moved back to Nepal. He then completed his higher education in Nepal with merit from Juddhodaya high School (JP), Kathmandu. Freedom movement While pursuing his intermediate level at Tri-chandra College, he was constantly inspired and motivated by the ongoing democratic movement taking place in the country against the autocratic Rana regime. This led Shrestha to participate in the freedom movement. He assisted the leading Nepali Rastriya (National) Congress (Nepali Congress Party) on several protest programs, awareness programs and mass meetings. When the then Rana regime banned Nepali Rastriya (National) Congress and declared illegal in April 1948, Shrestha along with the bunch of other senior coworkers namely Tripubar Singh Pradhan, Gopal Prasad Rimal and Bijaya Bahadur Malla formed a new party called ' Nepali Praja Panchyat ' on 12 October 1948. It organized series of public meetings under the fundamental rights provisions of the constitution. But in spite of its legitimacy, the autocratic Rana regime suppressed its activities suspecting a more serious designs against them. Nepal Praja Panchyat then launched a Satyagraha movement in the three cities of Kathmandu Valley, demanding the implementation of the constitutional provisions relating to fundamental rights. Alarmed by this and its political connections with the earlier banned Rastriya Congress leaders, the Rana Government arrested hundreds of political suspects. At the age of just eighteen in late 1948, just few months after his marriage with Manorama Devi Shrestha, Shrestha was also arrested in the protest program at lalitpur, Patan and imprisoned. He was inhumanly beaten and tortured at times when he refused to co-operate with the ruthless authority. Later in early 1951, the regime was forced to release him and his other political coworkers nearly after two and half years in the wake of the deepening gravity of the peoples' movement in and across the border. Soon after their release, in February 1951, one hundred