Serpentine
Page 66
“Sir, I have engaged a new lawyer and I have to consult with him before giving my statement,” answered Charles respectfully. “Please, may I wait for him?”
Judge Nath mulled the request. “Your lawyer has nothing to do with your statement,” he said. “It is you who must answer questions and give a statement.” But he granted another few minutes.
The P.P. was even more dubious. He had several hundred other pressing criminal matters in his portfolio, and it angered him that, due to Charles’ stalls, delays, and sleight-of-hand this murder trial threatened to become a life’s work. Standing next to Charles while waiting for the new lawyer to materialize, the P.P. could not resist muttering, “Mr. Sobhraj, since I assume you are going to deny all these things, then why do you need to suffer having to await a lawyer? You can give your statement on your own.”
“I am innocent,” snapped Charles. “That is why I am going to fight. Why did you accept this bloody case? I’ve lost my money, my lawyers … do you actually think I killed this man?”
The P.P. shook his head sadly and moved away. “I am merely going by the evidence,” he said. “It is up to the court to decide.”
By midafternoon the judge had no patience left and once again summoned the defendant. “I intend to read from the evidence on record from the prosecution witness, Barbara Smith,” announced Judge Nath, “I will ask you questions … and you can say that the statements are correct, incorrect, or, if you wish, further explain yourself.”
Charles agreed, looking not the least upset over having to handle his important appearance without benefit of counsel.
“It is in evidence that you, Jean Dhuisme, Marie-Andrée Leclerc, and Mary Ellen Eather came to India on June 5, 1976, in Dhuisme’s car, from Pakistan. Is that correct?” asked Judge Nath.
“It is correct,” answered Charles.
“At the time did you have a valid passport?”
“Yes, your honor.”
“It is also in evidence against you that on June 8 you, along with the others previously named, went to Bombay.”
“It is correct.”
“It is further in evidence against you that you were introduced to Barbara Smith in Bombay … and that you represented yourself to her as a ‘big businessman’ and asked her to accompany you to Japan. What have you to say?”
Charles shook his head in elaborate negation. “It is totally incorrect,” he said. And from that moment on, he denied everything. To each of Barbara Smith’s sworn statements as read by Judge Nath, Charles replied, “It is totally incorrect.” He denied even knowing Barbara, he denied having been inside the Ranjit Hotel, or the coffeehouse where the chicken curry was allegedly doctored, or ever having laid eyes on Jean-Luc Solomon. When Judge Nath was done, having dictated each of the defendant’s denials into the record, he posed one more interesting question to the man who claimed to be the victim of a young woman’s self-serving lies. In the months gone by, a parade of witnesses had come before the judge to identify Charles and link him with Solomon, they being waiters and room clerks and cleaning women and doctors and police. “Why have all these witnesses spoken against you?” asked Judge Nath.
Charles answered quickly, as if punching a button in his head to deliver a programmed response. “Because they are all being tutored by the police,” he said hotly. “Because they are testifying at the insistence of the police … Barbara Smith was pressured by the police to turn approver and make false statements against me … I also want to bring to the notice of this court the fact that the two approvers tried to commit suicide …”
Judge Nath interrupted. “What does this have to do with this case?”
“… They entered into a conspiracy to impress the court and make their statements believed. They made a show of suicide.” In modest astonishment, Judge Nath called it quits for the day, probably thinking, as was the press, that if the girls’ attempt at suicide was only a show, then it bordered on Grand Guignol. Each ate enough barbiturates to knock out everybody in the courtroom.
The next day Marie-Andrée took the stand, with Frank Anthony carefully guiding her through a similar minefield of “It is totally incorrects” and Charles at her elbow murmuring, “Chérie! say, ‘I do not remember,’” or “‘Say it is not within my knowledge as I was not there.’” At one point Charles’ prompting grew so intrusive that Frank Anthony whirled and hissed blazingly, “Shut up! Don’t interrupt her! Please let me question my witness myself!”
When Marie-Andrée was finished denying everything except her name and age and the fact that she wore a black turtleneck sweater and leather jacket, Judge Nath asked her the same question he had of Charles. Why did so many prosecution witnesses testify against her? Who should be believed?
Marie-Andrée nodded expectantly, as if she were a schoolchild finally asked the question on which she had done her homework. She pulled out a handwritten statement and received permission to read it to the court. It echoed Charles’ declarations of the day before, that in particular Barbara Smith and Mary Ellen Eather had been squeezed by Tuli and his cops. “Barbara told me that she had no choice in the matter … She said, ‘If I refuse to become an approver, they will charge me in the murder and I will spend many years in jail’ … On August 4, 1976, Mary Ellen told me that both of them had agreed to become approvers and that the police had given to each of them a typed statement to learn by heart …”
Nor could Marie-Andrée resist the temptation to pour black paint over the character of Barbara Smith. She told the judge that Barbara was “a loose type … she used to go to bed with anybody who was ready to pay her … she was in the habit of taking drugs … she lies in everything she says.”
On her way out of the courtroom, Marie-Andrée accepted the congratulations of Charles and held her head high. She told a reporter, “No, I was not nervous because I did not do anything … I feel at peace now … I have confidence I will get out of everything.”
Lawyers came and went as quickly as Suzy. Fed up with playing second fiddle to Anthony, the able young Chowdhury quit the defense of Marie-Andrée with the complaint that he had not been paid. Charles fired Rupinder Singh regularly, but always hired him back. Rupi was valuable in looking after the other cases against Charles going on simultaneously in other courtrooms around Delhi. And Frank Anthony was sidetracked in mid-trial by having to defend an even more celebrated client—Indira Gandhi. The fallen Prime Minister engaged her old friend to represent her in charges of corruption and obstruction of justice. The tempo of the Solomon murder trial, already funereal, became a gasping bagpipe.
More than likely Charles was happy, for after the prosecution finished its case and Judge Nath nodded toward the defense to commence, Charles began throwing new wrenches into the wheels of justice. He wanted delays, both to keep himself in the center ring and to afflict the other side with weariness. From his pen flowed new petitions seeking to halt the trial unless his “human rights” were restored, accusing the police and guards of treating him like “an animal” or “a robot” or “a stone” or “a tree.” Judge Nath routinely denied the petitions. Then Charles fired what he obviously intended to be a major cannon: he came up with a most curious letter of repentance allegedly written by Barbara Smith. In it, she took back much of her testimony and said she had borne false witness due to fear and the arm-twisting of Tuli’s interrogators. The trouble was, the letter was neither signed nor witnessed, and it was printed in a rather anonymous-looking hand. Moreover, the letter was absurd in places, particularly the suggestion that the doctors who tried to save Solomon’s life did not give their best efforts. “He [Solomon] was a Jew, so there could be political explanations,” said the letter.
Judge Nath refused to admit the document, nor would he allow Barbara Smith to be recalled for another defense examination. “You had adequate opportunity to ask Miss Smith questions when she was a witness before this court,” said the judge, tartly adding that the defendant was deliberately trying to delay the outcome of the trial.
The High Court refused to grant Charles’ plea and declined to order his requested new delay in the proceedings. “Matters do not appear to be going very well for the great man, do they?” mused Inspector Tuli, his delight unhidden. But Charles gave no sign of even a fractional loss of optimism. Reporters overheard an interesting snatch of dialogue between the defendant and his lawyer, Batra, during a recess.
“Isn’t the judge getting a bit fed up with these delays?” asked Batra of his client.
Charles shook his head. “He has listened patiently to the police. Now he should give us time and listen to us … Do not worry. I will not hang as a result of this crime.”
The months passed. The great cycle of seasons pushed India from her vibrant winter greens to the parched mustards of April. Matters of greater importance shoved Charles to the back of the newspapers, and then out altogether. A cyclone killed forty people. A tiger ate two children. Riots broke out both for and against Indira Gandhi as she attempted a comeback. The political landscape turned violent and bloody. When the monsoons broke the paralyzing heat of June, the rivers overflowed. Hundreds died. The new Prime Minister, an ancient ascetic named Morarji Desai, who attributed part of his longevity to the practice of drinking a glass of his own urine each day, refused to withdraw India from membership among nations possessing nuclear bombs. Another thirteen million people were born in the year of the trial. The saga of Charles Sobhraj shriveled to a significance less than that of graffiti scrawled on a wall, washed away by the rains of time.
At last came the closing arguments.
As the lawyers assembled for their final sermons, observers in the courtroom measured the two sides. It was agreed that the doughty little P.P. had performed commendably. The state’s case was well presented, all bases touched, all witnesses save Mary Ellen Eather standing up to the winds and wrath of the defense.
Conversely, the defense to this point seemed all flash and dash, with precious little underpinnings. For months, Charles and his several lawyers had been yelling that Barbara Smith was a liar, a user of drugs, and a prostitute. Yet the defense offered no testimony to substantiate any of this except accusations made by the defendants themselves. Importantly, her account of the poisoned chicken curry and the fatal aftermath in the Ranjit Hotel was not discredited at all, not a syllable, save those denials uttered by other members of the entourage. The defense further tried to establish that Jean-Luc Solomon was a drug addict, emphasizing that almost two full days passed between the time that Charles & Company left the Ranjit Hotel and the French tourist was found unconscious on his balcony. But no testimony was presented that would confirm Solomon used drugs, nor was any witness summoned who could shed light on what happened during the last forty-eight hours of his life.
The defense posture boiled down to one favored by criminal lawyers all over the world: (1) smear the state’s star witness, (2) smear the reputation of the victim, (3) smear the police and their strong-arm tactics, and (4) pray that everything was sufficiently confused so that the judge would give the defendants benefit of the doubt.
“My client is innocent, my lord,” said the lawyer Ghattate, who had represented Charles during his appearance before the Supreme Court of India. “There is no evidence against Charles Sobhraj which can stand the scrutiny of this court … There is only the evidence of Barbara Smith, the approver, and without substantial corroboration on each point it cannot stand … Sobhraj is supposed to have given tranquilizers in the chicken curry to Jean-Luc Solomon. But even the prosecution does not contend he gave any tranquilizers after the night of June twenty-eighth. For more than forty-eight hours—between the twenty-ninth of June and the first of July—nothing was known of Solomon. What is known is that there were injection marks on his arms which doctors have testified were recent.… I say it was a case of attempted suicide … The police want to keep Sobhraj ‘in.’ They have foisted this case. They concocted his arrest and they concocted this trial, saying he was a notorious criminal … Now I come to the fateful night when my client is accused of drugging Solomon’s dinner. Sobhraj was serving the chicken curry with one hand, holding the plate with the other. My lord, where did the third hand come from to drug the food? … This theory of the plastic bottle is a figment of the imagination! … I repeat, my lord, that the charges are false and fabricated. My client is innocent …”
On behalf of Marie-Andrée, Frank Anthony submitted his final argument in writing. Long, scholarly in parts, scalding in others, it was principally a slashing attack on Barbara Smith. Reminding the judge that the witness was unable to remember the name of the school administrator back in England who signed her graduation diploma, Anthony construed this gap to illustrate how everything Barbara said was “a tissue of lies.”
To all of this, the P.P. listened quietly, standing in his usual place before the bench, a solemn, dour little man whose face was void of the theatrical emotions favored by the defense. The P.P. had less money in his pocket than the opposition, and less prestige. He was not even given the courtesy of being addressed by his name, Daljit Singh. But the P.P. had, at this moment, something that to his thinking was far more valuable: a better case. When it was his turn, he defended the state’s evidence calmly, then turned to look at Charles Sobhraj. Behind his thick glasses burned strength and determination, like a man who refused to be shoved around by bullies a moment more.
“The prosecution case has been fully proved, beyond reasonable doubt,” he said calmly. “The accused, Sobhraj, must receive the maximum penalty for his heinous crimes. We demand the penalty of death … death by hanging.”
During the next few weeks, while Judge Nath secluded himself to prepare the verdict, Charles remained at center stage. He had a few more cards to play. On the night of July 25, allegedly morose and despondent, he tried to hang himself in Tihar Prison. At least he said he did, but guards found him only a moment or two after he draped a not very taut piece of blanket strip about his neck.
Then he began a hunger strike in protest against his treatment in prison and as melodramatic illustration of his pessimism concerning his fate in the courts of India. “This is a fast unto the death,” he sent word to reporters. “… I cannot bear any more mental and physical torture … I feel I am going mad … I am advising my lawyer to inform my family in France and the French Embassy … Once I thought there was justice in India … Now I realize there is none … I will die by fasting …”
On August 8, 1978, Judge Nath beheld a strange scene as he prepared to pronounce his decision. Charles Sobhraj was brought into the courtroom on a stretcher, one wrist handcuffed to an attending guard. He was almost lost within the folds of a dirty gray blanket. He looked ghastly. Rumors circulated through the courtroom that his fast, three weeks old at this point, was truly killing him. Doctors had found a blood clot near his heart, the rumors went.
The distinct possibility existed that this thin, wretched, shocking little man would die before Judge Nath could intone his fate.
“I do not care what this judge does to me,” gasped Charles, his voice a death rattle. He clutched his throat with the free hand, as if feeling the place where the noose would be draped. “I am … my own judge … and I judge myself … innocent …” With that his hand fell to the stretcher
and his head rolled about as if it was no longer attached to his spine.
Marie-Andrée went to him and nuzzled him and wept—for herself, for Charles, for what never was, for what never would be. As Judge Nath took his seat, the prisoner did not even pay him the courtesy of attention. With supreme indifference to the business of the morning, Charles had roused himself and was reading the financial page of the Hindustan Times as his sentence was pronounced.
Book Five
DESTINIES
EPILOGUE
When the sky turns green,
And the earth spins gold,
When the elephant climbs tree,
And the fires of sun are cold,
Then look sharp! A man can change his destiny.
Nineteenth-century sailing chant
—Checkers was not seen again in Delhi. Friends in India shared several rumors. One had her living in Paris, where she became a successful prostitute in the 16th Arrondissement. Another insisted that she had married a wealthy Pakistani businessman and was mistress of a great household in Karachi. And yet another suggested that hers were the unidentified bones of a Western woman found stripped clean by wolves and vultures, in a remote, savage gorge within the Khyber Pass.
—Red Eye obtained a valid American passport and returned to the United States.
—Barbara Smith was released from Tihar Prison and pardoned for any offenses connected with the death of Jean-Luc Solomon. Several months later, she was still in Delhi, seen often in the company of well-to-do Indian businessmen.
—Mary Ellen Eather was returned to Tihar and faced charges in the drugging and robbing of three French tourists at the YMCA Hotel. The P.P. was studying the possibility of charging the Australian woman with perjury in the Solomon death.
—Jean Dhuisme was acquitted in the Solomon case, but pleaded guilty in the YMCA crimes and was given three more months in Tihar.