Source: The Sangai Express / PTI
Kathmandu, July 13 2010:
Nepal's top court will decide the fate of Indian and Vietnamese origin celebrity criminal Charles Gurmukh Sobhraj tomorrow, as it gives its final ruling in the long-pending sensational murder case of an American backpacker in 1975 .
Sobhraj was convicted by the Kathmandu district court in 2004 for the murder of American tourist Connie Jo Bronzich in Nepal.
The verdict was later upheld by the Patan Appellate Court in 2005.He moved the apex court in 2006 challenging the lower courts' verdict.
Nicknamed the "Bikini killer" and "Serpent", 65-year-old Sobhraj has been accused of luring young women and killing many of them.
Sobhraj, who is currently serving 20 years imprisonment after being convicted in the three-decade old murder case, has appealed to the Supreme Court against the verdict.
Sobhraj has claimed that he never came to Nepal before 2003, when he was arrested from a Kathmandu casino.
According to the police, the international criminal was arrested when he arrived here for the second time in the cover of a French businessman.
A division bench of Justices Ram Kumar Prasad Sah and Gauri Dhakal has fixed July 14 for giving its ruling in the murder of the American tourist that is pending for the last five years.
The hearing on the case was completed in the last week of June.
Sobhraj's lawyer Ram Bandhu Sharma expected that the final verdict would come on July 14, the Himalayan Times online said today.
It is alleged that Sobhraj escaped arrest in 1975 after committing murders of two foreign tourists, Bronzich and Laurent Armound Carriere (Canadian) .
The second case involving the murder of the Canadian tourist is pending in Bhaktapur District Court against Sobhraj.
Sobhraj, who was earlier held in New Delhi's Tihar prison, was deported to France in 1997 .
Earlier, Sobhraj's French lawyer had even petitioned the UN's Human Rights Commission in Geneva seeking justice for the high-profile criminal.
The trial has been splashed in the international media after Sobhraj announced his engagement and then marriage, while inside prison, to Nepali teenager Nihita Biswas in 2008 .
Sobhraj fell in love with the Nepali beauty when she met him to apply for a job as a translator.