[Buddha-l] Is there any basis for the allegations concerning the "expulsion" of Ani Karma Lhamu?

[Curt Steinmetz]

What appears, at least to me, to be an especially ugly smear campaign 
has been making the rounds on teh interwebs for a month now. The gist of 
the story is that a Nepali nun (named Ani Karma Lhamu, and also referred 
to as Sangita Lama) was (or was going to be) expelled from the Sangha of 
nuns because she had been raped. That (in my view intentionally false) 
version of events appears to originate from a July 11 article in the 
Times of India (TOI) written by Sudeshna Sarkar and titled "Gangraped 
Nepal nun now faces expulsion from nunnery" (fair warning: the details 
of the brutal attack on this young woman are truly horrifying and 
heart-breaking):
http://tinyurl.com/3s94jnn

The Nepal Buddhist Federation (NBF), for its part, has publicly taken 
the position that no such expulsion ever took place, and indeed there is 
(so far as I can tell) no evidence whatsoever that any such expulsion 
was ever considered at all. In fact the NBF have committed themselves to 
ensuring that she is returned to the nunnery where she lived and trained 
for years prior to her trip to India (where she was raped by five men on 
a bus). Here is the NBF statement:
http://www.sherpaworld.com/show.php?at=1&sn=4115

A great deal of self-righteous chest-beating has occurred on blogs and 
online discussion forums, all of it, in my opinion, based on false 
allegations and misleading insinuations contained in the TOI article.

Does anyone know of any independent sources of information regarding 
this case, or in any other way have any light to shed on this very dark 
story?

Curt Steinmetz