Kathmandu. Charles Sobhraj, the French serial killer who committed multiple murders across Asia in the 1970s and inspired the Netflix series The Serpent, will be freed and deported today. This was announced by the authorities and his lawyer.
Charles Sobhraj, 78, jailed since 2003 for the murder of two American tourists, was reportedly released on health grounds. The Supreme Court of Nepal decided on Wednesday.
The serial killer was due to be released on Thursday, but his release was delayed by a day due to logistical and legal issues. Prison officials said they would hand him over to immigration authorities after receiving the court documents. The court has ordered his deportation to France within 15 days.
“Once you’ve been taken to immigration, it’s decided what to do next. He has a heart problem and wants to be treated at Gangalal Hospital,” said Gopal Shiwakoti Chintan, his lawyer. The serial killer will require open-heart surgery and his release is in line with a Nepalese law that allows the release of bedridden prisoners who have already served three-quarters of their sentence, the court said.
The French Foreign Ministry said it had not yet received an official request from the Nepalese authorities for Charles Sobhraj’s expulsion, but that France would grant it if necessary. If he were “notified” of such a request, “France would be obliged to comply as Mr Sobhraj is a French citizen,” a ministry spokeswoman said.
A French citizen of Vietnamese and Indian descent, Charles Sobhraj began traveling the world in the early 1970s, eventually ending up in the Thai capital of Bangkok. Disguised as a gem dealer, he befriended his victims, often western travelers in the footsteps of hippies, before drugging, robbing and killing them.
“He despised backpackers, poor young drug addicts. He thought of himself as a criminal hero,” says Australian journalist Julie Clarke, who interviewed him in 2021. Nicknamed the “Bikini Killer,” he has been linked to more than 20 murders. Charles Sobhraj’s other nickname, “The Serpent”, comes from his ability to assume other identities to escape justice: this is how he became the title of a hit BBC and Netflix series based on his life.
Arrested in India in 1976, he spent 21 years behind bars before briefly escaping in 1986 after drugging guards. Eventually he was recaptured in the Indian state of Goa. Released from prison in 1997, he retired to Paris but resurfaced in Nepal in 2003, where he was discovered in the tourist area of Kathmandu and arrested. The following year, a court sentenced him to life in prison for the 1975 murder of American tourist Connie Jo Bronzich.
Ten years later, he was also convicted of the murder of Bronzich’s Canadian partner. Nadine Gires, a French woman who lived in the same building as Charles Sobhraj in Bangkok, said last year that she initially found him “sophisticated” and impressive. But in the end “he wasn’t just a scammer, a seducer, a tourist thief, but an evil killer”.