Kathmandu, Aug 27 - Nepal's Supreme Court said it will start hearing from Oct 29 yesteryear's 'Serpent' Charles Sobhraj's appeal in a nearly 30-year-old murder case that, for the first time in a crime career spanning two decades and several continents, found him guilty and put him behind bars with a life term.

It is the last chance for the 65-year-old -- who during his six-year imprisonment in Nepal has soaked up more of the local law than many criminal lawyers -- to prove his innocence or remain in prison till his jail term ends.

The new legal battle promises to be explosive with Sobhraj's battery of lawyers having dug up several sensational revelations from old court records that are likely to throw serious doubts on the prosecution's case.

Police allege Sobhraj had sneaked into Kathmandu from Bangkok in 1975, using the tampered passport of a Dutch tourist he befriended in the Thai capital and subsequently killed. During his brief stay in Kathmandu, police say Sobhraj also befriended American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich and killed her in order to get hold of some precious stones the woman was believed to have bought in India.

But the records gleaned by Sobhraj's lawyers from the old case file indicate that police had earlier suspected Bronzich's travelling companion, a Canadian called Laurent Armand Carriere, of having killed her.