KATHMANDU. Charles Sobhraj, the French serial killer who committed several murders across Asia in the 1970s and inspired the Netflix series, will be released today and deported The Serpent. The authorities and his lawyer announced it.
Charles Sobhraj, 78, imprisoned since 2003 for the murder of two American tourists, was reportedly released for health reasons. The decision was made on Wednesday by the Supreme Court of Nepal.
The serial killer was due to be released on Thursday, but due to logistical and legal issues, his release was delayed by one day. Prison officials said they would hand him over to immigration authorities after receiving the court documents. The court has ordered that he be deported within 15 days to France.
“Once taken to immigration, it will be decided what to do next. He has a heart problem and wants to be treated at Gangalal hospital,” explained Gopal Shiwakoti Chintan, his lawyer. The serial killer needs open-heart surgery and his release is in line with a Nepalese law that allows bedridden prisoners who have already served three-quarters of their sentence to be released, the court said.
The French Foreign Ministry said it has not yet officially received a request from the Nepalese authorities to expel Charles Sobhraj, but that France will 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 and ended up in the Thai capital, Bangkok. Posing as a gem dealer, he befriended his victims, often western travelers on the trail of hippies, before drugging, robbing and killing them.
“He despised backpackers, poor young drug addicts. He considered himself 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, making it 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 being able to escape briefly in 1986 after drugging the guards. Eventually he was recaptured in the Indian state of Goa. Released in 1997, he retired to Paris but reappeared in 2003 in Nepal, where he was spotted in the tourist district 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 murdering 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 “cultured” and impressive. But in the end he “was not just a swindler, a seducer, a thief of tourists, but an evil murderer”.