By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS
Kathmandu : “I am confident I will be released,” said Charles Sobhraj, clutching the bars of the partition that separated the strip of the long room from visitors.
“If the judges did not think I had a good case, they would have dismissed it a long time back.”
That was in late October when the final appeal in the sensational case, that saw him sentenced for murder for the first time, was expected on Nov 4.
In mid-November, after the verdict was delayed due to one of the judges being out of station, his optimism dimmed.
“I am giving myself a 60 percent chance now if you go by the evidence,” he said. “But this is Nepal. Anything can happen.”
Sobhraj remembers his arrest from a Kathmandu casino in September 2003 as vividly as if it had happened only yesterday.
“I was having my dinner,” he says. “A man came up to me and asked, are you Mr Charles Sobhraj?”
The French man became alert. He remembered that a local paper had carried his photograph in the morning.
“I came to Nepal to mull business ventures and had already made substantial negotiations with a local businessman,” he says.
“He called me up in the morning to warn me. I suggest you leave Nepal now, he said. We can discuss the venture in some other country.
“But I had nothing on my conscience and I stayed on.”
The policeman asked him to go to the Hanumandhoka police station.
“After some argument, I decided to go to finish the business as quickly as possible.”
However, once in the police station, he was detained for 48 hours.
“When I asked them, on what ground are you detaining me, they produced copies of that newspaper report, saying it was evidence that I had killed someone in Nepal nearly 30 years ago.
“The very first day in the detention cell, I sent out someone to buy a copy of the constitution of Nepal, a history of the kingdom and the local law.
“I started reading and now I know everything about the laws of Nepal.”
Sobhraj says he uses part of that knowledge to advise foreigners jailed on criminal charges.
“I don’t generally mix with the others,” he says. “I keep to my cell. I listen to music, watch television and read.”
At 63, though shorn of his former rock star good looks, he tries to tend to his health by being careful about what he eats.
“I eat a lot of green salad,” he says.
A visitor hands him a bundle of tomatoes. “I am going to share these with a Japanese prisoner,” he explains.
What is most irksome to him is being kept in limbo without being given the final verdict.
He has already planned his next move if he loses the final appeal.
His lawyers in Nepal could move to have the case heard by a full bench instead of just two judges while his ace French lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, who in the past defended one of the most wanted terrorists, famous as the Jackal, will appeal in the International Court of Justice.
While steadfastly denying any involvement in the murder or indeed, having come to Nepal before 2003, he has made one sad realisation during his long stay in chaos-ridden Nepal.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” he said ruefully. “That was a big mistake.”