By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS
Kathmandu : When Nepal’s Supreme Court Sunday gives its verdict on a decades-old murder case that has kept Charles Sobhraj in prison since 2003, he will not just get justice but something more – new stardom.
The French national, once wanted by police of several countries for crimes targeting mostly western tourists, signed a film deal almost two years ago with three companies who will fly to Kathmandu next week to start shooting.
The film will portray Sobhraj’s side of the story that mesmerised the media four years ago when he was sighted in Nepal and charged with a double murder committed in 1975.
In December 1975, when Nepal was the hub of pot-smoking hippies hoping to find nirvana in exotic lands, Kathmandu valley was shocked by the discovery of two badly burnt bodies.
The victims were American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich, and her Canadian companion Laurent Armand Carriere.
Police initially suspected Carriere had killed Bronzich and decamped with her money. However, after the discovery of his body, they concluded that unknown person(s) killed him while the suspicion for the American’s murder fell on an Asiatic-looking man who was allegedly travelling on a Dutch passport.
The Bronzich case gathered steam only the following year after an Indian daily reported that Sobhraj was arrested in India and had “confessed” to travelling to Nepal earlier.
The Navbharat Times report made Nepal Police name Sobhraj as Bronzich’s murderer and subsequently, when he came to Kathmandu in 2003, he was arrested and charged with the murder.
The new film, that is to be made on Sobhrja’s long trial in Nepal, stay at a maximum-security prison cell and his encounter with the kingdom’s judiciary, will for the first time give his version of the story.
Sobhraj maintains he did not kill Bronzich and was never convicted for murder anywhere else. His ordeal in Nepal, he says, was due to media reports, which were “biased”.
“In India too, I was tried and sentenced by the media,” the lean, bespectacled French national told IANS.
“And then the Supreme Court set me free. In Nepal too I was tried and sentenced by the press court,” he added.
The 63-year-old, who says he came to Nepal in 2003 for the first time to explore the possibilities of making a documentary and exporting handicraft, is optimistic that the Supreme Court verdict will find him innocent.
“In Nepal, 95 percent of the cases in district courts find the accused guilty because of forced confessions and lack of expertise and experience by the judges, many of whom do not have a legal background.
“Yet they can sentence you to prison for life whereas in India, the sessions judges can’t give you more than seven years,” Sobhraj said.
Nepal’s Supreme Court has a reputation of overturning earlier verdicts, at times against great odds, and Sobhraj feels the two judges who have been assigned his case are among the most experienced and “fair”.
However, the film crew would not be able reach Kathmandu before Monday and will miss the court drama.
But after having waited for nearly four years, Sobhraj has immense patience.
“There’s only one thing I want to do immediately after the verdict,” he says. “I want to ring up my wife.”