Will Charles 'Serpent' Sobhraj be forever in jail?

Will Charles Gurmukh Sobhraj, arguably Asia’s most notorious murderer, walk out of a Kathmandu prison by autumn? Or will Sobhraj, also nicknamed the Serpent and Bikini Killer, remain behind bars at Nepal’s largest prison forever - mainly because his release could pose a threat to his life, especially from Nepal's drug peddlers whom he betrayed decades ago?

Highly placed sources in Nepal told MoneyControl that lawyers representing Sobhraj will soon meet in Kathmandu to find ways to argue their case if the Nepalese government refuses to unshackle Sobhraj.

Kathmandu Police, on the other hand, said they have information that despite being in jail, Sobhraj continues to nurture his links with members of Nepal’s notorious drug circuit and those involved in gold smuggling and money laundering. Hence, his release could cause complications for the Nepal government.

Interest in Sobhraj has grown in Kathmandu ever since a Netflix series, The Serpent, opened to viewers across the world. Sobhraj himself has told his lawyers that there were more than a dozen publishing agents waiting to outbid each other for his biography. He has said he would like to write a prison memoir in the style of Jean Genet, the first chapter of which will be on how he spent the first seven months of imprisonment in leg-irons.

To those who met him in jail, and also his lawyers, Sobhraj has said that filmmakers - including Hollywood filmmakers - are waiting to sign up his script for a biopic. Sobhraj has even said that actor Brad Pitt is keen to do the title role. He has put a price of Rs 4 crore for the rights to the book. But for all of that to happen, Sobhraj, now 76, must walk out of Kathmandu’s largest prison.

Cops in Kathmandu told MoneyControl that no one takes Sobhraj seriously in Nepal, no one believes him.

Paul Tester, co-producer of The Serpent series, told the Los Angeles Times that he too found Sobhraj to be a hopeless liar. “Arrest warrants were issued for those murders, but he successfully managed to avoid returning to Thailand, so they expired. Much of what’s known about the murders is from the mouth of Sobhraj himself, from interviews he gave to (biographer) Richard Neville. As with everything with Sobhraj, it’s difficult to verify where the truth ends and where the lies begin.”

Sobhraj’s wife, Nihita Biswas, who was 20 years old when she married Sobhraj - then 64 - in 2008, however, believes her husband is innocent. She has been in touch with Sobhraj through a weekly telephone call arranged by the jail authorities.

While in Kathmandu, Sobhraj's lawyers were also scheduled to meet Nihita and her mother, Shakuntala Thapa, also a lawyer, in the Nepalese capital.

Both Nihita, and one of Sobhraj’s lawyers, Saroj Ghimire, said it would not be an appropriate time to talk about the prisoner because it could complicate his chances of release. “She (Nihita) is under great pressure and will not talk. We are concerned about his safety because there are other powers waiting for him to come out,” Ghimire told MoneyControl. Nihita has said before that she firmly believes her husband is in jail because of his perceived ability to evade justice, which earned him notoriety across Asia and Europe.

Sobhraj’s lawyers - it is reliably learnt - have information that the Nepal government is deliberating whether it would be a good decision to keep 76-year-old Sobhraj in prison. Last year, Nepal’s jail authorities had plans to put Sobhraj on the list of elderly prisoners who could qualify for waiver of jail sentence. But the rule, it eventually emerged, was for Nepalese citizens and not foreigners.

Sobhraj was convicted for two murders and he does not qualify for waiver of sentence.

- Sanjeev Raj Regmi, senior official, Nepal government

Laxmi Bastola, head of Kathmandu Central Jail, said a list of 13 prisoners above 65 years of age would be sent to the department of prison. Sobhraj, who has already spent 21 years in jail, could be on the list but nothing is final. “We will then await a response from the home ministry,” said Bastola.

Sources in Kathmandu said senior functionaries of the government were not keen to waive Sobhraj’s jail term. “There is a serious issue of unpredictability with him. No one knows what he would do once he is set free,” the sources further said.

There are enough examples for the cops in Kathmandu to believe that he is on the wrong side of the law. There are reports from the jail that Sobhraj is very close with Yunus Ansari, a close associate of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, who used to carry out illegal activities for ISI in Nepal. Sobhraj, claim sources, is also close to Chudamani Upreti, nicknamed Gorey, the mastermind behind Nepal’s biggest gold smuggling racket. Before his arrest, Upreti had smuggled over 4,000 kilograms of gold in Nepal between 2016-18 from Thailand and Dubai for his Indian clients. His latest consignment of 33 kilograms of gold went missing in 2019. The sources say Sobhraj had links with Mohan Kumar Aggarwal, an Indian businessman who was Upreti’s biggest client, and who has since gone underground.

Nepal’s Director of Department of Prison Pradeepraj Kanel was quoted in The Himalayan Times as saying that his office had not waived Sobhraj’s sentence.

Last year, a committee of Nepal's government secretaries, officials of the Supreme Court and Nepal’s Attorney General had recommended that elderly prisoners, who qualified for sentence waiver under the Senior Citizens Act, should be released from jails in the wake of the pandemic because of unhealthy conditions in prisons of Nepal.

The conditions inside Kathmandu’s biggest prison have often come under severe criticism. In a series of articles in 2017 on Nepalese prisons, Renaud Meysonnier, a French tourist who set off on a trip from France to Asia, wrote about the pathetic conditions of the prisons where he spent a year. Meysonnier was arrested on the border of India and Nepal for using counterfeit currency and sentenced to a year.

Sanjeev Raj Regmi, a senior government official, told MoneyControl that the Nepalese government has not taken a call on Sobhraj’s release. “We had made it clear that the committee’s decision is only for Nepali prisoners. Sobhraj was convicted for two murders and he does not qualify for waiver of sentence,” said Regmi.

Sobhraj, who copped to being involved in a string of murders throughout Asia in the 1970s, is now 76. In June, 2017, he underwent an open heart surgery at a hospital in Kathmandu.

A superb chess player who could beat anyone in just 10 moves, Sobhraj - claim cops in Kathmandu - always keeps two books with him, Maxim Gorky’s Mother and Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.

Sobhraj, who had once proudly claimed he could even smuggle an elephant out of Nepal, was arrested from a casino in Kathmandu in 2003. He has been serving double life sentence - 40 years - since September 16, 2003, for the 1975 murder in Kathmandu of a Canadian tourist Laurent Carriere and US national Connie Jo Bronzich. His first sentencing was in 2005, and the second in 2014, when a court in Bhaktapur convicted him of murdering Canadian backpacker Laurent Carriere. The bodies of Bronzich and Carriere, both repeatedly stabbed and burnt beyond recognition, were found a few days apart in two different areas of Kathmandu.

On February 21, 2018, Nepal’s Supreme Court justices Kedar Prasad Chalise and Dr Ananda Mohan Bhattarai granted a jail term reprieve to Sobhraj: as per the judgment, Sobhraj needs to serve only 24 years (compared with 40) for the two crimes for which he has been in jail since September 16, 2003. That means Sobhraj can be officially released in 2027, at 82 years of age.

In 2017, his lawyers petitioned a court in Kathmandu that Sobhraj should be released as per the new Nepal Jail Manual guidelines that guarantee an automatic release of convicts over 72 years of age. Sobhraj, now 76, has already spent a little over 18 years in solitary confinement in Nepal’s Central Prison. But the petition did not draw a favourable response from the court.

In interactions with his wife and mother-in-law, Sobhraj routinely says he is being denied justice and that he did not commit any murders, but was convicted on the basis of some strange suspicion. He says he was not in Nepal when these bodies were found by the police. In his petition to the jail officials, Sobhraj has said that on release he would like to visit Nirmal Hriday, the first home of the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, and work as a volunteer.

Cops in Kathmandu say Sobhraj’s lawyers and family members have constantly refused to comment on cases where Sobhraj escaped from jails in Greece, Afghanistan and India, including New Delhi’s maximum security Tihar Jail where he drugged guards with sedative-laced sweets and escaped.

Nepal Police have very few documents pertaining to the case. But those who probed the case claim Sobhraj came to Nepal after committing as many as five murders with an Indian, Ajay Chowdhury. The body of Teresa Knowlton from Seattle, the first victim, was found floating in a pool, wearing a bikini. The others were Vitali Hakim, whose body was found burnt and discarded in Pattaya, and Hakim’s girlfriend, Charmayne Carrou, who had come looking for him. Sobhraj and Chowdhury also murdered a Dutch couple whose bodies were found burnt and discarded.

Sobhraj speaks more than seven languages, and has passed himself off as an Israeli scholar, a Lebanese textile merchant, and several other nationalities and professions in the past. The son of a Vietnamese shopgirl and an Indian businessman, Sobhraj was a lethal drug-and-rob man. But when he returned to Nepal in 2003, the murder of the Dutch couple in 1975 came back to haunt him. Crucial evidence was gathered by Herman Knippenberg, a Dutch diplomat. It helped the evidence that lay with Interpol. Sobhraj got a life sentence in 2005.

Now Sobhraj awaits freedom, there is a good chances that the Nepalese government will deny his request and the Serpent, once described as a supernaturally charming con man, will have spent the rest of his colourless life behind the iron walls of the prison.