By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS
Kathmandu : From a tightly guarded prison in Kathmandu, Charles Sobhraj, once wanted across the world for crimes ranging from murder to forgery, is now guiding a frantic search in India to prove his innocence in Nepal.
Sobhraj, whose life and series of crimes inspired several books and two documentaries in the 70s and 80s, is now trying to trace back a murder he was accused of in India in the mid-70s to convince Nepal’s apex court that he did not commit a double murder in Nepal around the same time.
The 61-year-old, who was dubbed the “Bikini Killer” by the tabloid press of yore for preying on young western tourists, is now fighting a life sentence slapped on him by a Nepal court on the charge of murdering an American backpacker, Connie Jo Bronzich, in 1975.
As Nepal’s Supreme Court began hearing his final appeal against the sentence, both the prosecution and lawyers hired by Bronzich’s father, have been arguing that Sobhraj murdered both the American student and her Canadian boyfriend Laurent Carriere.
The arguments are based on a “confession” they say Sobhraj made before an Indian magistrate in 1976 when he was arrested in New Delhi over the death of a French tourist, Luke Solomon, in the capital’s Ranjit Hotel.
After discovering Solomon’s body in a budget hotel, police arrested Sobhraj on the suspicion he drugged his countryman to death. A sessions court sentenced him to seven years in prison for homicide.
Nepali lawyers prosecuting Sobhraj say that during the trial he made a confession, admitting that he had come to Nepal the previous year.
The “confession” is a critical point on which Sobhraj’s conviction hinges since he has been denying that he ever came to Nepal before 2002, when he was arrested and charged with the double murder that had occurred nearly three decades ago.
In 1976, the police in India’s Uttar Pradesh state also charged him with killing an Israeli tourist in Benaras.
But the Delhi High Court acquitted him of that charge, saying that the man died of natural causes.
On Monday, Sobhraj himself made a surprise appearance in the Supreme Court to ask for the judges’ permission to refute the state lawyers’ claim that he had confessed to coming to Nepal earlier.
“I never made any confession,” he told IANS. “Instead, I appealed against the Benaras sentence and in 1980, Delhi High Court acquitted me, saying Solomon was found to be a drug addict who had overdosed himself.”
He is now marshalling his friends and acquaintances in India to dig out the Delhi court verdict of 1980 as well as ask the court for an affidavit saying that he had appealed against the conviction and won his case.
The affidavit could be a turning point in the Nepal case since the state lawyers, who do not have either any eyewitness or direct evidence to prove Sobhraj killed the two tourists, had been mostly making use of his reputation as a serial criminal.
Their argument is that since he killed a tourist in Benaras, he could have killed tourists in Nepal as well.
Sobhraj, on the other hand, points out that he has had no conviction for murder before Nepal.
“I have faith in India’s legal system,” Sobhraj had said earlier. “The Indian courts gave me justice.”