"I met her just two months ago and now we are in love, and I hope we will marry after I get released," Sobhraj said from Kathmandu's Central Jail.

Neha alias Nihita Bishwas, with a Nepali mother and a Bengali father based in Kathmandu, frequently comes to meet Sobhraj, jail officials confirmed.

The confident young girl, who met Sobhraj while he was looking for an interpreter, continued her meetings with him till they fell in love. That's how the courtship started and soon Nihita was visiting him regularly.

The celebrity criminal was arrested from a Kathmandu casino in September 2003 and has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a District Court in July 2004 on charges of murdering an American and a Canadian tourist in Kathmandu in 1975.

However, Sobhraj claims that he was put in jail without any evidence and believes that he will be released soon, with the Supreme Court set for a final hearing on Sobhraj's appeal next week.

"There was no evidence, no eyewitness to convict me in the murder," he stressed. "The police had forged photocopies from a 30-year-old register of Hotel Soaltee and Hotel Malla, which was presented as evidence," he claimed, adding "If I were in India and if the same charge was made against me, I would not even be put in custody. When asked about his new found love, Sobhraj said: I wish to marry her if I am released from the jail."

"I believe that I will be released soon," he stressed. Sobhraj said the girl's mother frequently comes to meet him in the jail and she has given the green signal to their relationship.

"My daughter is an adult and whatever decision she makes I will be happy," her mother told media persons. Sobhraj said when released they are planning to go back to Paris, where they will marry according to western tradition.

Nicknamed the 'Bikini killer' and 'Serpent' Sobhraj has been accused of luring young women and killing many of them.

According to sources, Sobhraj's first wife, whom he married in 1970 and is based in Paris, might have played a role in the latest drama over his new found love so as to win the sympathy of the Nepalese people and the court.