'Hello Charles, how are you?': When this Mumbai cop caught ‘Bikini Killer’ Sobhraj at Goa retaurant

MUMBAI: Retired policeman Madhukar Zende's birthday is on March 4 but people also tend to wish him 'many happy returns' on April 6. That was the night 36 years ago when Zende, then senior inspector at Mumbai's Agripada police station, arrested the elusive French serial killer Charles Sobhraj for the second time in his storied career.
"Hello Charles, how are you?" Zende had said, grabbing Sobhraj's arm on April 6, 1986 in a Goa restaurant. "Are you crazy, you must be mad," an unperturbed Sobhraj told Zende who then reminded him that he had nabbed him back in 1971. Today, three decades on, the news of Sobhraj's release after 19 years in prison in Nepal saddens the retired cop after whom a meaty dish in Goa now stands named the Zende platter.

"I am too small to comment on the court's decision to release him but, as a common man, I feel such a dangerous criminal should not be allowed to walk free," says Zende, who describes Sobhraj as a "most crooked criminal". Zende was posted at Gamdevi police station in 1971 when a petty thief named Ajay Parekh tipped him off about Sobhraj and crew planning a heist at the New India Assurance building in South Mumbai which saw a daily inflow of Rs 1-2 crore in cash at the time. Only a month before that, Sobhraj had duped a jeweller in a Delhi five-star.
"We stayed at Taj Mahal Hotel, waiting to catch him. On November 11, 1971, Sobhraj came in wearing a suit. We caught him. We interrogated him for a long time. We found rifles and revolvers. Later that year, during the Indo-Pak war, there was a complete blackout. Sobhraj took advantage of the blackout and escaped," recalls Zende, adding that he was later arrested in France, Afghanistan, Iran and Ceylon and managed to escape every single time.

"Then, one day in 1975, the Taj security manager spotted Sobhraj in the hotel's coffee house. Sobhraj sensed something amiss and fled. We got to know he was at the Ritz near Churchgate. We managed to interrogate a woman accomplice and found 6 to 7 of Sobhraj's passports," recounts Zende.
Sobhraj was nicknamed 'Bikini Killer' due to the attire of several of his victims. "His modus operandi was to spike victims' drinks and kill them," says Zende, about the serial killer who made his way to India in 1976. Here, he was arrested after he slipped a few poison pills to a group of French students who were visiting India, saying they were 'anti-dysentery medicine'. Sobhraj was sent to Tihar Jail. His term was of 12 years but he escaped in March, 1986.
Later, following a lead, Zende flew to Goa on April 3, 1986, backed up by a small team. He decided to spend time at O'Coqueiro, a restaurant frequented by several foreign tourists as it had a phone with an ISD connection. "Around 10.30 pm on the Sunday of April 6, two men in black hats walked out of a Premier Padmini car and entered the hotel. They took a seat in its verandah... I got up, rushed to Sobhraj's table, grabbed his arm and said: 'Hello Charles, how are you?' He asked me if I was mad. I reminded him that I had nabbed him in 1971. He whipped out his foreign-made revolver but my men managed to overpower him," recounts Zende.