Shobraj fears end in Nepal

After an Indian contract killer last month attempted to kill the influential son of a former minister inside Kathmandu's Central Jail, where Sobhraj has been doing time for the murder of an American backpacker in the hippie era of 1975, the 67-year-old says his life is in grave danger. 

Nepal's new government and police received a severe jolt last month after an Indian tried to kill Yunus Ansari, a budding Nepali politician and media investor, held in the same jail under the suspicion of being underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's henchman in Nepal and running a fake Indian currency and drugs network spanning South Asia and the Middle East. Investigations into the unprecedented security lapse, that allowed the Indian to smuggle a gun into the visitors' room, showed he had been regularly visiting Sobhraj in prison prior to the murder attempt. 

Though Ansari survived with a minor injury and Nepal Police have still not been able to unravel the mystery of who the contract killer was working for, his questionable association with Sobhraj has dragged the French citizen into the drama as well. Now Sobhraj has to contend with a suspicious Ansari as well as police, making him fear the cops are planning to wipe him out. 

Sobhraj's lawyer Shakuntala Thapa Thursday sent an SOS to the chief justice of Nepal as well as the French ambassador and rights organisations. She says police sources told Sobhraj that he would be transferred to a prison outside Kathmandu. During the transfer, she says in her petition, Sobhraj will be shot dead by his guards and a story be concocted that he was killed while trying to escape. 

She also alleges police tried to kill Sobhraj inside his prison last year but failed. She says an inspector and deputy superintendent of police sought to meet him outside his cell and visiting room. However, he became suspicious when he was not handcuffed and flanked by guards, as per the usual procedure, and refused to meet them. 

Police authorities however claimed ignorance of any move to transfer Sobhraj, who has remained in the media glare for eight years, first by claiming to marry a Nepali woman 40 years his junior and then, seeking 7 million euro as compensation from the Nepal government for "unlawful imprisonment".

-Times of India