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Defiant Sobhraj ‘wife’ pays him a visit
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ASIANAGE on 12 October, 2008 03:43:40
 
By Sudeshna Sarkar
Kathmandu
Oct. 12: Defying the new wave of negative publicity following her claim that
she had married yesteryears’ "Bikini killer" Charles Sobhraj in a traditional
Nepali ceremony in prison on Thursday, Ms Nihita Biswas, the 20-year-old Nepali
woman, on Sunday strode into Kathmandu’s Central Prison saying she was
visiting her "husband".
Nihita, who shot into limelight this year after her surprise engagement to
Sobhraj, flaunted a pote, the string of beads married Nepali women wear, akin to
the mangalsutra, and when signing her name in the visitors’ register, firmly
wrote "Nihita Sobhraj Biswas". In the box asking her to describe her
relationship with Sobhraj, she wrote without hesitation: "wife".
The previous week, when she had visited the 64-year-old in Kathmandu’s
central jail, she had written her name in the same register as "Nihita Biswas".
At that time, she had called herself his "friend". A cluster of reporters
swooped down on her as she walked out of the prison in the afternoon after a
brief meeting with her new "husband", who looked gaunt and tired. However, she
refused to answer the questions shot at her, asking her if she was really
married. Wearing an un-bride-like black jeans and brown T-shirt, Nihita was
accompanied by her mother, Ms Shakuntala Thapa, a leading lawyer who is now
defending Sobhraj against the life term slapped on him by Kathmandu’s district
court four years ago for the murder of an American tourist in 1975, and a young
Nepali man.
Family sources said now that the traditional wedding is complete, the couple
will move to register it with the district administration once Nepal’s
administrative departments, courts and the French embassy reopen after the long
Dashain holiday. The Himalayan Times daily, which had in 2003 first spotted
Sobhraj in Kathmandu’s tourist hub Thamel and published his photographs that
led to his arrest, on Sunday quoted an advocate as doubting if a convict could
get married inside prison. While prison authorities have dismissed Nihita’s
claim, saying the pair had only been allowed to undertake a brief tika ceremony
that is part of the Dashain celebrations, the underlings, however, have been
regarding the act as a consummated marriage. "You can’t meet Sobhraj now," the
policewoman posted at the prison for women visitors told the correspondent.
—IANS