Current Status
In late 2007, news media reported that Sobhraj's lawyer had appealed to the current French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, for intervention with Nepal. In 2008, Sobhraj announced his engagement to a woman Nihita Biswas from Nepal (who later participated in the reality show Big Boss 5). On 7 July 2008, issuing a press release through his fiancée Nihita, he claimed that he was never convicted of murder by any court and asked the media not to refer to him as a serial killer. Later, it was claimed that he married his fiancée on October 9, 2008, on the occasion of Bada Dashami, a Nepalese festival, in a much famed, but not publicised, wedding that took place in the jail itself. On the following day, Nepalese jail authorities dismissed the claim of his marriage. They said that Nihita and her family had been allowed to conduct a tika ceremony, along with the relatives of hundreds of other prisoners. They further claimed that it was not a wedding but part of the ongoing Dashain festival, when elders put the vermilion mark on the foreheads of those younger to them to signify their blessings.
In July 2010, the Supreme Court of Nepal postponed the verdict on an appeal filed by Sobhraj against a district court's verdict sentencing him to life imprisonment for the murder of American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975. Sobhraj had appealed against the district court's verdict in 2006, calling it unfair and accusing the judges of racism while handing out the sentence.
On July 30, 2010 the Nepalese Supreme Court upheld the verdict issued by the district court in Kathmandu of a life sentence for the murder of US citizen Connie Jo Bronzich and another year plus a Rs 2,000 fine for using a fake passport to travel. The seizure of all his properties was also ordered by the court. His mother-in-law/lawyer Shakuntala Thapa and his 'wife', Nihita, expressed dissatisfaction with the verdict and Thapa claimed that Sobhraj had been "denied" justice and "judiciary is corrupt". They were charged and sent to judicial custody for contempt of court because of these remarks.
Sobhraj currently has another case pending against him in the Bhaktapur district court for the murder of Laurent Armand Carrière, a Canadian-born tourist.
Read more about this topic: Charles Sobhraj
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