The belief that the law should be applied fairly to all, regardless of nationality, received a setback last week from Japan's judiciary. That is the reaction of people of good will to the rejection by the Tokyo High Court of the appeal filed over its earlier decision to allow continued police detention of a Nepalese man already acquitted of murder and robbery charges by the Tokyo District Court. The anomalous situation in which Mr. Govinda Prasad Mainali, a 33-year-old former restaurant employee, finds himself is particularly disturbing since the lower court cleared him more than three years after his arrest for allegedly killing a female employee of Tokyo Electric Power Co. and stealing 40,000 yen that belonged to her.

The district court felt that the evidence incriminating the suspect was outweighed by the many holes in the prosecution's case. Dissatisfied with the ruling, zealous public prosecutors appealed to the Tokyo High Court for a retrial. That court then authorized Mr. Mainali's further detention in response to the prosecutors' request and has now rejected the appeal against their action filed by his lawyers. It is curious that the presiding judge last week felt "there are good reasons to suspect" that Mr. Mainali did commit the crimes with which he was originally charged when an earlier decision by a different judge of the same high court had turned down the request for detention following a similar rejection by the district court.

The judge in the earlier high-court refusal ruled there was no other choice unless circumstances justifying detention existed. Apparently he thought there were none. What caused his colleagues to rule differently? Mr. Mainali's lawyers are right to try to learn the answer. The prosecutors argue that it would be impossible to go ahead with the necessary procedures in the event of a new trial if the suspect were no longer in Japan -- Mr. Mainali was facing imminent deportation as a visa overstayer.