Charles ‘The Serpent’ Sobhraj freed from Nepal prison, deported to France
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KATHMANDU - Charles Sobhraj, a convicted killer who police say is responsible for a string of murders in the 1970s and 1980s, was released from a Nepal prison and deported to France on Friday after nearly two decades behind bars.
Sobhraj, 78, a French citizen of Indian and Vietnamese descent, is suspected of killing more than 20 Western backpackers on the “hippie trail” through Asia, usually by drugging their food or drink in the course of robbing them.
He told AFP on Friday that he feels “great” after being released from the prison in Kathmandu.
“I feel great... I have a lot to do. I have to sue a lot of people. Including the state of Nepal,” Sobhraj told AFP in an exclusive interview on board a plane to France via Doha.
Sobhraj, who is portrayed in the hit series The Serpent, was due to arrive in Paris early on Saturday morning.
Nepal has barred Sobhraj from entering the country for 10 years, said the immigration department’s acting director-general Pradashanie Kumari.
Nepal’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered Sobhraj’s release from prison,
Wearing a woollen cap and a blue fleece jacket, he was escorted to Nepal’s immigration department by seven police officers.
Earlier on Friday, he was driven out of Kathmandu’s Central Jail in a cavalcade of police cars, according to prison official Ishwari Prasad Pandey.
Police officers escorting Charles Sobhraj to the department of immigration in Kathmandu after he was released from prison on Friday.
PHOTO: AFP
Sobhraj had been held in the high-security prison since 2004, when he was arrested on charges of murdering American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975.
Dubbed the “bikini killer” in Thailand – and “the serpent” for his evasion of the police and use of disguises – his exploits have been the subject of several dramatisations, including a Netflix and BBC joint production released in 2021.
In 2008, Sobhraj married Nihita Biswas – 44 years his junior and the daughter of his Nepalese lawyer – in a secret prison ceremony.
“I’m happy and have great respect for our judiciary and Supreme Court,” Sobhraj’s mother-in-law Sakuntala Thapa told Reuters partner ANI after news of his release was announced.
Charles Sobhraj’s wife Nihita Biswas outside Nepal’s immigration department where her husband was brought to on Friday.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
Sobhraj denied killing the American woman and his lawyers said the charge against him was based on assumption.
Several years later, Sobhraj was also found guilty of killing Ms Bronzich’s Canadian friend Laurent Carriere.
But he is suspected of many more murders, including in Thailand where police say he allegedly drugged and killed six women in the 1970s, some of whom turned up dead on a beach near Pattaya.
He was jailed in India for poisoning a group of French tourists in the capital New Delhi in 1976, before he could stand trial on the charges against him in Thailand.
Sobhraj escaped from India’s Tihar jail in 1986 after drugging prison guards with sweets, cookies and cakes laced with sleeping pills.
Police arrested him three weeks later in the Indian holiday state of Goa.
“I walked up to their table and said, ‘You are Charles’,” police officer Madhukar Zende, who caught him in Goa, told The Indian Express newspaper in an interview published on Friday.
A statue of Sobhraj stands at the restaurant in Goa to this day. Sobhraj was jailed in India until 1997, when he returned to France.
A statue of Sobhraj stands at the restaurant where he was arrested in Goa to this day.
PHOTO: AFP
Sobhraj has at least one daughter from a previous relationship who lives in France.
His true number of victims, spanning decades and several countries, is unknown. REUTERS, AFP
