By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS
Kathmandu : With Nepal’s Supreme Court set to announce its final verdict on a more than 30-year-old murder case that put Charles Sobhraj behind bars for life, the 63-year-old is wavering between hope and alarm.
Sobhraj, once a dominant name in the underworld of several countries and wanted by police forces for forgeries and thefts targeting foreign tourists, became convicted for murder for the first time in Nepal.
In 2003, the police traced him to a casino in Kathmandu and arrested him for the murder of an American backpacker, Connie Jo Bronzich, in 1975.
A year later, a district court judge sentenced him to life imprisonment and the following year an appellate court rejected Sobhraj’s appeal against the decision.
The undeterred Sobhraj started a fresh battle in Nepal’s Supreme Court and after a long delay the final verdict is expected later Sunday.
Sobhraj says he has faith in the two judges hearing his case. Anup Kumar Sharma is one of the most senior judges in the apex court and Bahadur Magar has a reputation for fair play.
The conviction brought Sobhraj in the limelight after his leading a low-profile life in France, where he had been deported from India. The same intense media glare is anticipated when the verdict is announced.
Unlike in 2004, this time Sobhraj is determined not to go to the court to hear the verdict, in a bid to avoid the media glare. However, it is likely that his friends, who flew to Kathmandu from India, would be in court.
Sobhraj claims he never came to Nepal before 2003 and had no involvement in Bronzich’s death.
The Nepal police made a dogged attempt to keep him behind bars.
First, he was charged with coming to Nepal on a fake passport. Though the court acquitted him, the police arrested him from the court premises immediately afterwards and charged him with a double murder.
Besides Bronzich, they also held him responsible for the murder of her companion, Canadian Laurent Armand Carriere, who was killed in the same way.
However, the Carriere murder could not stick as police first could not find the old case file and then, it was found that due to a technical reason, the 1975 case could not be re-opened.
Sobhraj says he was convicted on the basis of biased media reports. His lawyers, who include the top legal eagles of Nepal, say his reputation caused his undoing.
If he is freed and walks out of Kathmandu’s central jail, Sobhraj says the first thing he would do is to call up his daughter in France.
Extremely protective about his family, all he would say about her is that she is just nine and he wants to keep her away from prying eyes.
If he is convicted, Sobhraj says he will not lose heart. He would take his case to the International Court of Justice.