KATHMANDU, DECEMBER 23

The Supreme Court today issued a show cause notice to the government in response to a habeas corpus writ petition filed by murder convict Charles Sobhraj seeking remission of his jail sentence on grounds of being a senior citizen.

A single bench of Justice Anil Kumar Sinha issued the show cause notice asking the government to furnish a written reply within three days on why Shobhraj should not be released from jail.

The Frenchman, who earned the nickname 'bikini killer' for allegedly committing serial murders throughout Asia in the 1970s, was convicted in Nepal for two murders and has been in jail here since 2003.

Sobhraj's lawyer Advocate Shakuntala Thapa told THT that her client, who was 77, filed the habeas corpus petition at the SC, as even after the apex court ordered the government three years ago asking it to decide within three months on the question of remission of his sentence, the government did not do anything and he was still in jail. 'Our main argument is that there should be no discrimination between a Nepali and a foreign prisoner.

No Nepali convict has spent more than 10 years in jail, but Sobhraj has been in jail for the past 18 years,' Thapa said.

Director of Department of Prisons Shravan Kumar Pokharel, however, told THT that Sobhraj's argument for remission of his jail sentence on grounds of being a senior citizen was not valid because the Senior Citizens Act stipulated in its explanation section that the provisions would apply only to Nepali citizens.

In 2014, Sobhraj was sentenced to 20 years in jail for the 1975 murder in Kathmandu of Canadian tourist Laurent Carriere. In 2004, he was sentenced to a life term for murdering American tourist Connie Jo Bronzich.

Sobhraj had undergone open heart surgery in 2017.

Sobhraj was arrested from a casino in Kathmandu after his picture was printed on THT's front page while he was living incognito in Thamel.

Pokharel said the Home Ministry had drafted rules for remitting jail sentence of Nepali citizens as per the Supreme Court's order and the new rules could be finalised within the next two weeks.

Senior Citizen Act states that senior citizens may get waiver of sentence not exceeding 50 per cent in the case of a senior citizen who is 70, but not yet 75. The Senior Citizen Act also stipulates that notwithstanding anything contained in the prevailing laws, the court may, in view of the gravity of offence, order to hold an incompetent senior citizen or a senior citizen having completed the age of 75 years who has been sentenced to imprisonment in a care centre not in a prison.

A version of this article appears in the print on December 24, 2021, of The Himalayan Times.