UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal has said that he and Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba should be jailed first if insurgency-era cases are to be pursued to punish Maoist combatants for acts carried out during the course of the 10-year insurgency.Dahal, who repeatedly referred to human rights activists during his speech without naming any of them, accused a group of rights activists of dragging the insurgency-era cases into controversy.”If cases are to be filed against Maoist combatants in contravention of the spirit of the Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA), then I and Sher Bahadur Deuba should be jailed first because at the time I was commander of the Maoist combatants while Deuba was prime minister of the country,” said Dahal at an interaction organized jointly by members of five Maoist parties, here on Friday. “I am chiefly responsible for all that happened from our side during the war period. And Deuba is responsible for the entirety of the problems that people faced from the state side. That’s why we both are mainly responsible.”Dahal’s statement has come at a time when rights bodies and activists have launched strong protests against the nine-point agreement reached between the two major ruling coalition partners CPN-UML and UCPN (Maoist). Under one of the points in the deal, the two sides agreed to initiate procedures for the withdrawal or amnestying of some cases from the insurgency period and other ‘politically-motivated’ cases filed on various occasions