Kathmandu: Fighting his last battle for freedom in Nepal, where he has been jailed for life, yesteryear crime maestro Charles Sobhraj finds himself pitted against two men from his buried past who may hold the key to his freedom.
Making legal history in Nepal if not in Asia, a police officer returned to court three decades after the crime to testify that he had seen Sobhraj — once dubbed by the tabloid press the Bikini Killer and the Serpent — in Kathmandu posing as a Dutch tourist in 1975.
"I don't remember a lot of things now but I remember his face," former deputy inspector general of police Chandra Bir Rai told judges in Nepal's Supreme Court on Monday.
Rai, now 79, arrived in Kathmandu from the southern Bhairahawa town to testify in a case that electrified Nepal and the world three years ago when Charles Sobhraj was rearrested here for a double murder committed in 1975.
Rai was the police superintendent in December 1975 when the charred bodies of an American tourist, Connie Jo Bronzich, and her Canadian boyfriend, Laurent Armand Carriere, were found around Kathmandu Valley.
The suspicion fell on an Oriental looking tourist, who was staying at two posh hotels in the capital, using the passport of a Dutch tourist from Bangkok, Henricus Bintanja.
The retired officer told the court how he had questioned the suave, well-groomed foreigner in a Kathmandu police station and told his men to keep him under surveillance.
However, the man, who was staying with a woman at the five-star Soaltee Hotel, avoided meeting hotel employees by putting up a 'Don't Disturb' sign outside his room and fled at night using the fire escape.
Almost three decades later, Charles Sobhraj was sighted in Kathmandu by a local daily and the alerted police arrested him from a casino.
When Nepal police charged him with the double murder in 2003, Sobhraj pleaded innocent, saying he had never come to the kingdom before.
However, after the district court found him guilty and slapped a life sentence on him, he said he had not been given a fair trial and demanded that the witnesses from the 1975 case be called for cross-examination.
The gods granted his wish in the new year, which began with Rai and another link from the past being asked to testify in court on New Year's Day.
The second witness, who police think can identify Sobhraj as "Bintanja", is Purna Maharjan, a chauffeur employed by a car rental agency in 1975. Maharjan had driven the car to the hotel and handed over the key to the foreigner.
While the chauffeur's meeting with the tourist was "fleeting", Rai, whose testimony is likely to carry a lot of weight with the judges, told the court he remembered the man clearly.
The final appeal case could develop into a battle of wits between the retired official and Sobhraj if the court allows him or his lawyers to cross-examine the witnesses.
The next hearing in a case that awakened the interest of the media worldwide is expected to take place in two months after the prosecution tables the documents the judges have asked for.
The judges want to examine the guest registers at the two hotels signed by "Bintanja" in 1975. Police say the handwriting matches Sobhraj's signature in his current passport while his lawyers claim there's no resemblance.
This is the last chance for freedom for the 63-year-old Sobhraj, who has been held in a high-security cell in Kathmandu since his arrest in 2003.
A court of appeals earlier rejected his appeal against the life term and now, the case is before Nepal's apex court.
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