TNN
 
Katmandu, Oct 20: Hoping for a fast trial after the long festival break, Charles Sobhraj's dreams of freedom and consolidating his marriage were rudely shattered on Sunday when Nepal's Supreme Court put off the hearing yet again.

With the judges taking part in a meeting on the reformation of judiciary, the bench did not sit and Sobhraj, anxiously awaiting the resumption of the trial, was left fretting at the "system".

The 64-year-old had been hoping that Sunday's hearing would take him closer to freedom from the Central Jail in Kathmandu, where he has been imprisoned since 2004 after the district court found him guilty of the murder of an American tourist Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975.

He has been fighting a long legal battle since then, first challenging the verdict in the appellate court, which rejected his appeal, and then, taking it up in the apex court.

The Vietnam-born Indian entrepreneur's son was hoping for an acquittal last year as police have not been able to produce any clinching evidence. But his hope was unfulfilled when the judges instead ordered for a minor passport forgery case, which had already been settled, to be re-opened.

On Sunday, Sobhraj's lawyers were expecting that the prosecution would wind up its argument. Sobhraj had been estimating that it would take another three to four hearings, when his lawyers would shred the state case and establish his innocence.

But now, it looks like another weary wait for the French national with Nepal beginning the countdown to another festival, Tihar, for which courts would close once again.

The yesteryear's Serpent's plan to celebrate Christmas in Paris with his new wife, 20-year-old Nepali Nihita Biswas, is also likely to be put on hold since the trial looks set to spill over into 2009.

The more the hearing is delayed, the more has Sobhraj been smarting under a hostile Nepali media that has been accusing him of trying to stage jailbreaks and of even having become insane.

Some of the media as well as public hostility stems from his becoming engaged to Nihita this year, giving rise to expressions of incredulity and condemnation. Now with the couple's statement that they had a traditional ceremony during the Dashain festival right inside prison which made them man and wife, they have landed in fresh controversy with the prison authorities denying the ceremony and the district administration reportedly refusing to register the "marriage".