love at first sight or love at first flight? Hehehe...
Shobrajs' jailhouse love blooms with 20-yr-old Nepali girl
Sometimes
love seems to even melt solid prison bars, or pretty much something
like that has happened with the notorious serial-killer Charles Shobraj
who is serving a life sentence in Kathmandu's Central jail from the
past five years for murdering American Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975.
Of
all the thing, Shobraj, 64, also known as the "serpent" after being
suspected of murdering over 20 backpackers in different countries, has
now found a new love in a 20-year-old Nepali girl, and the prison bars
that separate the two hasn't deterred them from exchanging engagement
rings and planning to marry.
Shobraj first met
Nihita Biswas, a daughter of a Bengali man from Kolkata and a Nepali
career woman, three months ago at the Central jail, and it was love at
first sight.
Nihita, who aspires to become a
journalist, arrived at the prison to work as a interpreter for
Shobraj's French lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre who was arriving in
Kathmandu from Paris to inspect the status of their appeal against the
life term. But as fate would have it, she instead fell in love with
Shobraj.
The feelings were mutual and though he no
longer needed an interpreter, Sobhraj did not want to lose sight of her
and pretended he had an assignment for her.
"He
gave me a list of things he wanted me to buy for him," Nihita laughs
while recounting her first encounter with the man dubbed as the "bikini
killer" to Indo-Asian News Service (IANS). "It was an enormous list."
Then
she started to visit him regularly, and soon their jail romance
bloomed. Nihita has already told her mother about their romance and has
also taken her to the prison to meet her future son-in-law as the
couple plan to marry. And surprisingly, Nihita's mother is quite
approving of her choice of bridegroom.
"I am a
human rights activist," Nihita's mother told IANS. "I think Sobhraj was
sent to prison without any evidence to prove he had committed the
murder. He was convicted by the media that made a mountain out of a
molehill. My daughter is an adult and free to decide whom to marry. If
she is happy then I am happy too."
Shobraj and
Nihita have exchanged rings and become engaged. But their plans for
marriage will only materialize if his appeal against the "guilty"
verdict will be overturned by Nepal's Supreme Court and he will be
released this year.
"I don't know what he was,"
Nihita says when asked if she isn't bothered by her fiancée's past
criminal record. "But I know what he is now. He is a good and caring
man and that's what's important." nepalnews.com ag July 03 08
