Unidentified miscreants tried to bomb the bedroom of Sujata Koirala, daughter of Nepal's former prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala, in a pre-dawn attack here Thursday.

Sujata Koirala, who belongs to the Nepali Congress party headed by her father and is an outspoken critic of the government and the royal family, had a narrow escape when the bomb hit the trees outside her bedroom and fell back in the garden, igniting with a blast.

The explosion, which occurred around 4 am, left a hole in the ground and destroyed the branches of a cluster of trees.

No one was hurt.

A second early morning blast went off at the main gate of the district election office at Sinchahiti, Kathmandu Valley, damaging the gate and three rooms.

Initial reports suggested the attack on Sujata Koirala's house could be the handiwork of Maoist insurgents, but the rebels issued a statement denying involvement.

Sujata Koirala said it was a "pre-planned attack" engineered by the "palace".

Both she and her father blame King Gyanendra for the current political instability in Nepal and accuse him of having usurped executive authority.

Sujata said she had been receiving threats for over a week. About four days ago, she said her domestic staff was quizzed by a group of people about the location of her bedroom.

Sujata Koirala's residence at Mandikhatar in Kathmandu is a well known venue for political meetings between her father and other leaders of the Nepali Congress as well as other opposition parties.

On Wednesday, it was the cynosure of all eyes as the venue where Girija Prasad Koirala met another leader, Madhav Kumar Nepal of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML).

Last year, the UML and Nepali Congress had together led an agitation by five opposition parties against the two governments handpicked by King Gyanendra, causing both to quit.

However, the agitation lost steam this year when the UML left the protesters to join the new government of Sher Bahadur Deuba. Since then, relations had soured between the UML and the Nepali Congress.