After fruitless appeals to the UN, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Nepal’s King Gyanendra, crime mastermind Charles Sobhraj a.k.a. The Bikini Killer is now appealing to radically different quarters for justice – the former Maoist guerrillas.

Closely watching the political changes in Nepal since he was arrested in the Himalayan kingdom in 2003 and slapped a 20-year jail term for the murders of a Canadian woman and an American man in the 1970s, Sobhraj is now pinning his hopes on the former rebels who are trying to return to mainstream politics.

The French national, who is fighting his sentence in Nepal’s Supreme Court, has written a letter to Nepal’s influential Physical Planning and Works Minister Hisila Yami asking for "justice" and "protection."

Copies of the appeal have also been forwarded to Maoist supremo Prachanda, who is likely to be the next prime minister of Nepal; Baburam Bhattarai his deputy who is also Yami’s husband; Sarkozy, and the French ambassador to Nepal. Signed "respectfully yours", the four-page letter alleges that Sobhraj is being harassed because he made a philanthropic gesture.

Last month, soon after the historic constituent assembly election, a local daily reported that a teen had been kicked out of her family home by her father for having voted for the Maoists.

Sobhraj, who read the report in his cell in Kathmandu’s central prison, immediately dashed off a letter to the Himalayan Times, lauding the girl’s spirit and offering to pay for her college education.

His letter to the Maoist minister also adds that he had in the past donated money to two women whose husbands were Maoists killed in the public protests of 2006, which ended King Gyanendra’s regime and helped the Maoists come to power, and also helped a Maoist prisoner get medical attention.

After his sponsorship offer to the defiant teen, Sobhraj says a reporter from the daily complained to the jailer that he was mouthing political statements in violation of prison regulations. The complaint, the letter says, resulted in a raid of his cell to search for unauthorized documents and the curtailment of his right to receive visitors.