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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsMadhukar Zende’s book Mumbai’s Most Wanted: The Thrilling Case Files of a Supercop recounts the pursuit of Charles Sobhraj in Goa and a stakeout at O’Coqueiro, a restaurant in Porvorim. Zende’s account supplies the scene’s details; former senior police officer Julio Ribeiro separately says Zende traced Sobhraj to O Coqueiro and detained him there.
The book behind the account
The passage appeared in Scroll on May 21, 2025, with permission from Mumbai’s Most Wanted: The Thrilling Case Files of a Supercop, by Madhukar Zende and published by HarperCollins India. The excerpt is Zende’s account of the case, not a complete operational record of the arrest.
What Zende says happened in Goa
Zende’s excerpt opens at O’Coqueiro in Porvorim, near the Mumbai–Goa highway. It describes officer Shashi Raut waiting there after five days of pursuit under a false identity, then recognizing Sobhraj after nearly ten years. Those details belong to the scene as Zende tells it.
The excerpt identifies the man being pursued as Gurmukh Charles Sobhraj and says he travelled from Thailand to India in 1976 using a stolen passport. Zende writes: “In 1976, he used one such stolen passport and escaped from Thailand to India.” The account says an alert hotel manager helped bring Sobhraj to police attention, but the available passage does not provide a full arrest sequence or precise date.
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What is corroborated about the restaurant
In a separate essay about Zende’s career, former senior police officer Julio Ribeiro also names the restaurant as the place where the officer caught up with Sobhraj. Ribeiro writes: “Zende traced him to a popular restaurant O Coqueiro in Goa and detained up from there.” This independently supports the restaurant connection, but does not verify every detail in Zende’s account of the stakeout.
Read Ribeiro’s essay on Scroll.
How the excerpt describes Sobhraj’s criminal record
Zende recounts a history spanning several countries, but distinguishes convictions from reported deaths and allegations. The excerpt names convictions in Thailand and Nepal, refers to other deaths as alleged or reported, and says Sobhraj admitted to killing at least a dozen people before later recanting that confession. These are claims as presented in the excerpt; they should not be read as a finding that every reported killing resulted in a conviction.
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What the available account does not establish
The excerpt and Ribeiro’s essay identify O Coqueiro in Goa, but do not establish a precise arrest date or a complete chronology of the operation. The May 21, 2025 date is when Scroll published the excerpt, not a stated publication year for Zende’s book.
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