National
Charles Sobhraj to spend another night at Kathmandu jail
Nepal’s apex court on Wednesday directed the prison management authority to free the serial killer on the ground of age.Post Report
Charles Sobhraj, a notorious French serial killer sentenced to a life term, will have to spend another night at the central jail in Kathmandu.
Gopal Siwakoti Chitan, Sobhraj’s lawyer, told the Post that the immigration authorities requested the central jail administration to bring him to the immigration department only on Friday morning citing a lack of space.
Nepal’s apex court on Wednesday directed the prison management authority to free the serial killer on the ground of age.
A division bench of Justices Sapana Pradhan Malla and Til Prasad Shrestha has also asked the government to arrange to send him to his home country, France, within 15 days. Responding to the petitions seeking the release of Sobhraj, who was convicted of killing two foreign nationals in Nepal, the court concluded that the 78-year-old should be freed as he has already completed 95 percent of his jail term.
However, there were doubts on whether Sobhraj will be freed today as it was said that he has yet to serve jail term on two cases including a passport forgery. The Kathmandu District Court, however, later gave him clearance.
The notorious criminal with police cases in different countries was convicted of killing the American citizen Connie Jo Boronzich, 29, and his Canadian girlfriend Laurent Carrière, 26, in 1975.
Arrested on September 19, 2003, Sobhraj’s lifetime imprisonment would end on September 18 next year. The French citizen with Vietnamese and Indian parentage committed a string of murders throughout Asia in the 1970s.
Sobhraj, who has been implicated in more than 20 killings, served 21 years in prison in India for poisoning a French tourist and killing an Israeli national.