Jail officials: Sobhraj wedding a gimmick

Kathmandu, Oct. 10: A day after Charles Sobhraj’s Nepali fiancée Nihita Biswas announced that she had tied the knot with the murder convict, Nepal’s central jail authorities rejected the claim, calling it a gimmick to generate media hype.

"It was simply a traditional ceremony Nepalis perform during Dashain (Nepal’s biggest Hindu festival)," a Nepal Police inspector who was in charge of the prison said.

"On Thursday, we allowed all prisoners to observe Vijaya Dashami with their visiting relatives," said the official, who did not want to be named. "To facilitate the ceremony, we have erected a tent-like structure where prisoners were allowed to go from their cells and their relatives put the vermilion mark — tika — on their foreheads. It was a simple tika ceremony and nothing more," he added.

Prison guards said on Thursday, Nihita, the 20-year-old woman who had created a sensation this year with the news of her engagement to the 64-year-old suspected serial killer, had come to the prison accompanied by her brother Vijay and mother Shakuntala Thapa.

Ms Thapa, a leading lawyer, is currently defending Sobhraj in the Supreme Court, where judges are hearing his final appeal against the guilty verdict slapped on him by two lower courts for the murder of an American tourist, Connie Jo Bronzich, in 1975.

"Since the girl says she is engaged to Sobhraj and Ms Thapa considers herself to be Sobhraj’s mother-in-law, the lawyer put the tika on Sobhraj’s forehead as his elder and he did it to Nihita and her brother," the police official said. "The rest is simply a gimmick."

The guards claimed that the stories that have sprung up about Sobhraj — once dubbed Bikini Killer for preying on western tourists and the serpent for his alleged ability to escape from the most stringently guarded prisons — were sheer media hype.

"Even the tales that he is colossally rich is untrue," one of Sobhraj’s guards said.

Meanwhile, Sobhraj’s friend on Friday claimed the duo entered into a wedlock on Wednesday which can be called a "symbolic wedding ceremony".

David Woodard, who is co-authoring a book on Sobhraj’s life, claimed that the prisoner and Nihita Biswas got married on Wednesday. —IANS,PTI