Kathmandu : Nepal's Supreme Court has ordered 'Bikini killer' Charles Gurmukh Sobhraj's 'wife' to prove that she is legally married to him, amid a contempt of court battle following her outburst against the verdict upholding the life term verdict on the Indian origin criminal. A Supreme Court division bench of Justices Ram Kumar Prasad Shah and Balaram KC demanded legal documents to prove 22-year-old Nihita Biswas's marriage with the convicted 'serial killer', the nepalnews online reported today.
The order came amid hearing of contempt of court case against Biswas and her mother Shakuntala Thapa, who is also Sobhraj's lawyer, for using "abusive" language against the judges who delivered the verdict upholding life imprisonment of the French national for the murder of an American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich here in 1975. The apex court said yesterday that the pair could not claim to be related to Sobhraj, now a French citizen, since there was no legal evidence to prove that Nihita and Sobhraj were married. Nihita, who had met Sobhraj in Kathmandu's Central Prison in 2008, claims she fell in love at first sight. It is claimed that the pair, who have a 44-year age difference, married in a brief private Nepali ceremony last year inside the jail.
Since then, the Nepali beauty has described herself as the wife of Sobhraj, who has an earlier failed marriage. The mother-daughter duo had accused the judges of corruption following the final verdict in the case on July 30 which dashed Sobhraj's hope for freedom. Nihita and Shakuntala had to spend a night in jail and apologised for their outbursts against the judges. Their lawyers pleaded that the court take a sympathetic view since they have already apologised. The court scheduled the next hearing in the case for August 22, the report said. A contempt of court case was filed by advocates Rajan Adhikari and Shanta Sedhain. Nicknamed the "Bikini killer" and "Serpent", Sobhraj has been accused of luring young women and killing many of them.
66-year-old Sobhraj, whose father was an Indian and mother a Vietnamese, was sentenced by the lower courts to a 20-year life term for the murder of Bronzich and one year jail and Rs 2,000 fine in the fake passport case. He has already spent seven years in prison. PTI
