Sobhraj mother-in-law case triggers debate

KATHMANDU - Dogged by controversies ever since she started defending serial killer Charles Sobhraj, Nepali lawyer Shakuntala Thapa is now at the heart of another legal debate after the country’s top court handed her a jail sentence and a severe restriction.

By Sudeshna Sarkar

Thapa, a senior lawyer, became a household name two years ago when her daughter Nihita Biswas announced she had fallen in love with Sobhraj, the man known to the world as the “Bikini Killer” of the 1970s, who is doing time in Kathmandu’s biggest prison.

Since last year, Thapa, more than 15 years Sobhraj’s junior, has been dubbed the French national’s “mother-in-law” after Nihita professed to have “married” him inside prison.

The feisty lawyer Monday found herself at the receiving end of law when the Supreme Court fined her and her daughter and sentenced both to prison for a week for committing contempt of the court.

The punitive action came after Thapa and Nihita expressed their anger over Sobhraj’s trial for a murder and the guilty verdict that resulted with the Supreme Court upholding a 20-year jail term for him for the murder of American tourist Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975.

Standing in the Supreme Court premises, Thapa and Nihita called the two judges, who had presided over Sobhraj’s trial, biased and having been bribed, and said they would seek other international remedies to get him released.

Though the mother-daughter duo was spared actual imprisonment with the judges hearing the contempt of court case against them saying they could pay a fine instead, Thapa received a glancing blow with the bench seeking to disbar her from becoming a judge in future.

Judges Balaram KC and Ramkumar Prasad Shah asked Nepal’s Judicial Council to formulate a law that would disbar lawyers, convicted of contempt of court, from becoming judges.

Now that part of the verdict has been criticised by Nepal’s powerful organisation of lawyers, the Nepal Bar Association (NBA), which called it unfair and detrimental to justice.

The NBA, of which Thapa too is a member, met Tuesday to discuss the verdict.

“I am against the provision that says a lawyer found guilty of contempt of court can’t become a judge,” said Bijaya Prasad Mishra, secretary-general of NBA. “Thapa’s case was not a criminal contempt, and therefore should not be regarded as a disqualifying factor.”

“The disqualification means that any lawyer who rubs up a judge the wrong way can be punished and controlled,” Mishra, a senior Supreme Court lawyer, told IANS.

“It will send out a very negative message and bring lawyers under the undue influence of judges.”

There are at least two judges who were convicted of contempt of court in the past and yet it did not derail their career.

While one of them, Kusum Shrestha, does not appear regularly in court, the other, Prakash Basti, is a regular Supreme Court judge.

However, the two judges’ advice to the Judicial Council is not likely to be implemented immediately, if at all.

“The Judicial Council can’t make a new law simply on the basis of a directive by judges,” Mishra said. “It has to first discuss it with the stakeholders - lawyers, the bar associations and judges.”

A second note of dissent was sounded by another powerful organisation, the Federation of Nepalese Journalists.

FNJ chief Dharmendra Jha has objected to the media guidelines laid down by the judges.

The media played a key role in the contempt of court case with Thapa and Nihita’s allegations against the court being publicised widely.

Though the judges said the media had remained true to its duty of disseminating news as it happened, court events were sensitive and court reporters should have a law degree.

Jha said it was not practical and amounted to a clampdown on freedom of expression.

Thapa and Nihita, however, have begun to avoid the media, though earlier they had courted limelight avidly.

A chastened mother and daughter arrived quietly at the court Tuesday to pay the fine of NRS.50 slapped on each of them. In addition, they also paid NRS.175 each as the court had said they could avoid doing time in prison if they consented to pay another fine of NRS 25 for each of the seven days.

Besides, they had to also submit a statement saying in future they would not seek to undermine the authority of the court.

It is now certain that Sobhraj’s effort to seek a review of his verdict by a full bench will not yield any result.

Caught in a Kathmandu casino in 2003 and arrested for the 30-year-old murder he has been in prison since then with two lower courts rejecting his claim to innocence.

Officials at the Kathmandu Central Jail, where he is working out a 20-year term, said given his notoriety and the international furore his case created, there was little chance of the 66-year-old having his sentence commuted or pardoned.

(Sudeshna Sarkar can be contacted at sudeshna.s@ians.in)