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Nepal Supreme Court to review Sobhraj case

Ameet Dhakal

Says lower courts did not adequately investigate murder charges against him

KATHMANDU: Nepal's Supreme Court on Sunday decided to review the case of international serial killer Charles Gurmuk Sobhraj, now a French national.

The apex court said the lower courts did not adequately investigate the murder charges against Sobhraj before slapping life imprisonment with property attachment on him.

The Patan Appellate Court earlier upheld the Kathmandu district court's verdict delivered in 2004.

Sobhraj moved the apex court against the verdict.

Reopening the case for judicial review, Justices Ram Prasad Shrestha and Rajendra Koirala said: "The lower courts' verdicts have convicted the accused without proper examination of the evidences." The evidence should be re-examined either by the Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology or the Supreme Court experts themselves should examine the thumbprints.

The district court convicted Sobhraj based on "circumstantial evidences" in the absence of concrete proof that he killed two foreign women in Nepal.

Sobhraj (60) was accused of the murder of an American national, Connie Jo Bronich, and a Canadian national in 1975. The Nepal police charged him with drugging the two victims, stabbing them and partially burning them, before dumping the bodies in two separate locations, one near Kathmandu airport and the other in a field near the UNESCO World Heritage Site at Bakhtapur. Police nabbed him when he came to Nepal as a tourist in November 2003.

Sobhraj, also known as "Bikini Killer" and "The Serpent", is the son of an Indian businessman and a Vietnamese woman. He is a household name on the Indian subcontinent.

He spent more than 20 years on the road across Asia befriending backpackers, drug-smugglers, diplomats and businessmen, then allegedly drugging, robbing and finally strangling or burning his acquaintances. He has been on the run from the police in Hong Kong, Thailand, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, and Greece.

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