BOOK
REVIEW
TITLE:
CHARLES SOBHRAJ- INSIDE THE HEART OF THE BIKINI KILLER
AUTHOR:
RAAMESH KOIRALA
PUBLISHER:
RUPA, 2018
PRICE: Rs. 500/- HARDBACK
The
Mysterious Mind Of A Master Criminal
Author Raamesh Koirala is a renowned cardiac surgeon in
Nepal. He successfully treated Charles Sobhraj’s precarious heart condition in
2017. This was 14 years after Sobhraj was
first arrested and jailed in Kathmandu in 2003. And as he replaced a number of
the valves in Sobhraj’s heart, Koirala became fascinated enough with the master
criminal to write this book.
Much of what Koirala writes about Sobhraj is on his
“criminal psychology”, his utter lack of remorse, his narcissism as a
psychopath. And the long trail of alleged murders in several countries without
apparent motive. He revisits some of the alleged murders and disappearances in
other countries to establish how Sobhraj sometimes stole both the passports and
the identities of his victims. He then believed that he was whoever he became.
Sobhraj got away with many of his alleged murders because
of circumstantial evidence, a lack of witnesses, and his clear-eyed and well
presented professions of innocence in court. Sobhraj also took a great interest
in the law wherever he was accused, reading up on it, and guided his lawyers on
the conduct of his trials. However, in Nepal, in the latter day, he seems to
have met his match.
The big question that Koirala asks Sobhraj in this book
however is- why did he return to Nepal at all where murder charges awaited him,
even after three decades? It earned him a life sentence for a murder going back
to 1975, and more cases were framed as the time went on.
Koirala writes : “In
2003, there were nearly 190 countries in the world. Charles Sobhraj was free
and living a happy life in France. He was a celebrity, believed to be making a
hefty sum of money from interviews and photo sessions. He even had a million
dollar contract with an Indian filmmaker who wanted to make his biopic. His
jail term in India was over; the Thai police had closed the cases of the
murders. Only one country in the world had active cases of murder against
him-Nepal”.
A would-be biopic on Sobhraj is probably less interesting,
despite the alleged multiple druggings, murders, and robberies on the hippie
trail of the seventies, in India, Thailand, Nepal - than what is revealed in
this book .
Sobhraj tells all, quite casually, but Koirala frames the
revelations in a fantasy sequence that he calls a “dream” about a TV interview
he conducts with the master criminal. Wisely perhaps, because what Sobhraj puts
out is uncorroborated.
He says the real reason Sobhraj had come to Nepal- he
insisted for the first time in 2003, in Sobhraj’s own words, was because:“ I wanted to organize an undercover business meeting of some guys
from the Taliban with a Chinese heroin producer in the Golden Triads. And
second one was a meeting with top brass from India”.
He claims that he knew Masood Azhar, the man much discussed
today as the mastermind of JeM, from their time in Tihar together:: “ He
introduced me to all the Taliban leaders. That’s actually why I visited Afghanistan
several times”.
He further tells Koirala :
“I had good relations with the Taliban and the Al Qaeda You know I even
had a nuclear deal with Saddam Hussein… Yes I had a business contract to supply
red mercury to Iraq and had already made a deal with a Russian group. But then
2003 happened”.
Koirala was hard- pressed to determine if Sobhraj meant the
“attack on Iraq by the USA” or his own 2003 arrest in Nepal.
Sobhraj claimed to have been in touch also with the CIA,
warning them about the possibility of 9/11. And that he was in Nepal to meet with India’s
Intelligence Bureau (IB), with which organization he was in good terms since: “
It was me who facilitated the return of that hijacked Indian Airlines plane
from Kandahar”.
And to heap more preposterousness on the gullible, Sobhraj
says: “Advani escaped an assassination due to my tip”.
Raamesh Koirala who
mixes the tale with medical talk, a little politics, and his love of trekking
in the mountains, does not think Charles Sobhraj will ever be released
from jail in Nepal.
(696
words)
For:
The Sunday Pioneer AGENDA BOOKS
March
19th, 2019
Gautam
Mukherjee
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