Sobhraj was here

If someone decided to do a Charles Sobhraj walk in Mumbai, there would be enough places in the city to string together. The city was his ‘laboratory’ for evil ideas, a recruiting ground for associates, and a refuge when he had to go underground. Labonita Ghosh takes a tour of the Bikini Killer’s haunts

Police lore has elevated the story to an unlikely, amusing, Livingstone-Stanley sort of encounter. But there was nothing even remotely romantic about former Inspector Madhukar Zende’s ambush of Charles Sobhraj in Goa’s O’Coqueiro restaurant in April 1986. “He was eating when I went up to him and grabbed his hand,” says Zende, who retired as an assistant commissioner of police some years ago. “‘Hello Charles!’, I said. He was caught unawares but suddenly became flustered. ‘Who is Charles? Are you mad?’, he said, to which I shot back: ‘I’m not mad, I’m Zende. Don’t you recognise me? I arrested you in 1971’.” And — just like that — Zende finally had the man he had been tailing for over a decade. The Houdini who had given cops on several continents the slip.

Sobhraj is back in the news, for his ‘engagement’ to interpreter-girlfriend Nihita Biswas. When Zende finally nabbed Sobhraj in Goa, the serial killer and master of disguises — wanted, by then, for over 40 murders all over the world — had passed through Mumbai, leaving a trail. “He was only interested in two things — women and money,” says Zende, 78, who now lives abroad. “Wherever he went, he left a trail of broken hearts.” It was the same story in Mumbai. Sobhraj had a rich Parsi girlfriend who was absolutely besotted with him, and wanted to marry him. Whenever he arrived in Mumbai and couldn’t find a safehouse, she kept him at her place, sometimes for months. But Mumbai was more than a place for amorous dalliances for Sobhraj. The city was his laboratory and his refuge; his training and recruiting ground for aides. According to The Life and Crimes and Charles Sobhraj, written by Australian journalists Richard Neville and Julie Clarke, his daughter Madhu was born in a Napean Sea Road apartment in 1976. Sobhraj also visited his father Hotchand, a Sindhi jeweller who lived and worked in Pune, quite often. Hotchand left Sobhraj’s Vietnamese mother and re-married, but Sobhraj kept in touch with his extended family, including a half-sister he is still very fond of.

Mumbai also bankrolled all his early activities. In 1970, Sobhraj worked briefly as a foreign car dealer. Since BMWs and Mercedes were not easily available in India at the time — despite a fair demand — Sobhraj began stealing them off the streets of Afghanistan and Iran, and selling them here. “People didn’t know him at the time. But shortly after the failed Ashoka Hotel heist in Delhi and his arrest in 1971, scared buyers started dumping the cars they had bought from him,” says Zende. He remembers at least four cars — a Pontiac, BMW, Alfa Romeo and a Chrysler — that lay unclaimed at the Crime Branch office for almost 15 years before they were removed.

Every successful attempt emboldened Sobhraj. From spending hours at a juice shop in Ormiston Road (now BEST Marg) in the Colaba area, mixing sedatives and uppers with drinks to find the perfect concoction that would knock victims out so that he could rob them, Sobhraj graduated to armed robbery and murder quite rapidly. In the early 1970s, he was caught just before checking into the Taj, Colaba. Five of his associates were also picked up, along with some smoke bombs. The gang was planning to rob the Air India office, which was then in the New India Assurance building. Between 1970 and 76, Sobhraj allegedly visited Mumbai at least eight or 10 times, popping up where police least expected him, and getting away before they could act. In this time, he was also said to have committed at least a dozen murders.

The Gateway and the Colaba areas were Sobhraj’s haunts. He frequented hotels like the imposing but somewhat run-down Stiffles to scout for aides from among down-and-out foreigners, backpackers and hippies. He never allowed much contact between his gang members, preferring to keep them in different hotels along the Colaba promenade, says Zende. And he never told them where he was, asking them to meet him only at public places. When he had money, Sobhraj checked into posh hotels like the Taj or Oberoi, where he could find prospective victims quite easily. When he ran out of cash, he stayed in dormitories or seedy hotels like the Travel Plaza near Mumbai Central station. But no matter where he stayed, he spent his days in Colaba charming and chatting people up, often at five-star coffee shops like the Shamiana at the Taj, where the nattily-dressed killer had no problem blending in. In 1971, when Zende and his men almost caught Sobhraj, he was staying at The Ritz in Churchgate. “He realised we were coming after him, so he checked out in a hurry, leaving his luggage,” says Zende. “We found three revolvers hidden in Yardley talcum powder boxes, bullets concealed in pieces of chocolate and passports of eight countries.”

The last time he was on the run, Sobhraj had stayed at Hotel Panchratna in Panvel for a few days with his gang, then rented a motorcycle and a car to drive down to Goa. Of the six Mumbai Police teams trying to track him down, Zende’s three-man unit was dispatched to Goa. An alert doorman at the Panvel hotel had noted down the numbers of the vehicles, so when Zende reached Goa, he started asking around. He was tipped off by someone who had spotted “the brand-new, peacock-blue motorcycle” Sobhraj was moving around in. Later, the Porvorim hotel where Sobhraj was picked up, allegedly found a unique publicity gimmick in the incident: They began advertising themselves as the hotel where the food was so good that even Sobhraj, with the police on his tail, had to stop and dine. It was a stunt Sobhraj himself would have been proud of.
l_ghosh@dnaindia.net