Talk:Charles Sobhraj
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[edit] Cell Phone
The article in the Prison section mentions Cell Phones in India in the 80's perhaps that should be a shoe phone, I am a little skeptical. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mokgen (talk • contribs) 09:11, 22 December 2006 (UTC).
As an American expat, living and working in India in 1986, I would hasten to add that India was still very much a tech backwater then; I had to wait 18 months to get my first phone installed and that took an enourmous amount of influence and bakseesh.. Now the country rings with over 50 million cell phones, with several million more added each month, but back then even though Sobhraj had enourmous influence and resources in his time in prison, as did many celebrity prisoners, I saw Man Singh weeks after his surrender, driving in a police jeep in gwalior buying Bhang at a market, this was a luxury that did not exist at the time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.202.213.36 (talk) 19:58, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Charles Sobhraj
I am the sister of one of Charles Sobhraj's victims. Her name is Teresa Knowlton, not Jennie Bolliver. Jennie Bollivar is the fictitious name referring to her by the author Thomas Thompson who wrote the book entitled "Serpentine". He (Thomas Thompson) interviewed my grandmother and some of Teresa's friends. He grossly misrepresented our family, especially our mother. Yturner 04:22, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
I can verify the correct name of the victim murdered in a tidal pool in Thailand as being Teresa Knowlton, not Jennie Bolivar. The book entitled "The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj" ISBN 0224017764 written by Richard Neville and Julie Clark, published in 1979, uses the correct names of the victims. Richard Neville interviewed Charles Sobhraj in prison. You can view the references to Teresa Knowlton at this website: http://books.google.com/books?id=BEwiAAAAMAAJ&vid=ISBN0224017764&dq=the+life+and+crimes+of+charles+sobhraj&q=teresa+knowlton&pgis=1 The name Jennie Bolivar was a fictitious name created by Thomas Thompson, author of the book entitled "Serpentine" Thomas Thompson changed the names of the victims in his book.Yturner 02:01, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Under the heading "Prison time" there is a banner saying-"This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2007)"
regarding I believe the following information that is in queston:
"Sobhraj's systematic bribery of prison guards at Tihar reached outrageous levels. He led a life of luxury inside the jail, with TV, and gourmet food, having befriended both the guards and the prisoners. He would walk in and out of jail whenever he wanted.[citation needed] Revelling in his notoriety, he gave interviews to Western authors and journalists, such as Oz magazine's Richard Neville in the late 1970s, and Alan Dawson in 1984. He freely talked about his murders, while never actually admitting to them, and pretended that his actions were in retaliation against Western imperialism in Asia, an excuse which most criminologists find highly doubtful."
He granted more than just the two interviews cited aboive and I would imagine that those lines are self serving PR, but The Hindustan times ran several articles the month of his escape and the weeks following his capture in Goa that spoke to this information, spoke about the complicity of the guards in his escape and of even more of the privalages in detail that he enjoyed in his cell. The time period predates electronic media and the archives would be viewable, as so much of this material may be available in hard copy, but outside of stray copies residing in the Library of congress,doubtful, the next best true source material would be if journalists kept any english language Indian news papers from that time. I also remember this information in the Nation and Bangkok Post of the same period as Reuters reprints and is most likely more retrivable. I, myself was in Goa at the time of his rearrest and there was an odd sense of anger amongst the hippie/traveler/expat community towards his arrest and he assumed an odd mantle of hero, that I never understood. It was a time that Man Singh, Phoolan Devi and many other Dacoits had emerged as folk heros and the sannyasin's of the Poona Rajneesh Ashram, had created a certain climate of foreign resentment towards local authority,that was akin to the golden age of outlaws in the US. the local newspapers had story after story on him and should be able to verify that the privalages were indeed as cited and more.
if I were an editor here I would redo the paragraph as:
"Sobhraj's systematic bribery of prison guards at Tihar reached outrageous levels. He led a life of luxury inside the jail, with TV, and gourmet food, having befriended both the guards and the prisoners. He would walk in and out of jail whenever he wanted. Revelling in his notoriety, he gave interviews to numorous authors and journalists, He freely talked about his murders, while never actually admitting to them."
<SR>
[edit] POV:
I tagged the article with a POV template because I feel the article (Especially the second, opening paragraph) has periods of POV writing, IE, the use of weasel words, over-descriptive text etc, which does not just deliver the facts but interprets them also. This coupled with the fact the article has almost no references means that this article may need a major rewrite. Cheers, Spawn Man (talk) 22:14, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
