Watch The Serpent? No thanks

The former assistant commissioner of police who arrested conman and murderer Charles Sobhraj avoids watching shows made about the criminal. The ban includes the latest, the miniseries The Serpent, now showing on Netflix.

"To me, he's a nobody," Mr Madhukar Zende, 83, tells The Sunday Times.

Shows about Sobhraj tend to glamorise a man Mr Zende deems unworthy of public attention.

Mr Zende, who served 37 years in the Indian police force, joining as sub-inspector before retiring in 1996 with the rank of assistant commissioner, is also unhappy with how Western reports have failed to credit the work of the Indian police in tracking down the killer.

"So now people tell me there's a show called The Serpent and I should see it. Why should I? He's a bad person," says Mr Zende of the French citizen of Indian-Vietnamese heritage who is believed to have committed at least 12 murders.

For the last four years, Mr Zende has lived in Singapore in the home of his son, who moved here from India to work in a multinational media company.

In 1971, Mr Zende was part of the team that nabbed Sobhraj for the robbery of a jewellery store at Hotel Ashoka in New Delhi.

The criminal, who would gain notoriety for preying on Western tourists on the so-called Asian "hippie trail", then escaped custody, one of several jailbreaks that would mark his career.

He broke out of one Indian jail, for instance, by holding a birthday party and handing out drug-laced sweets that knocked out the custodial staff.

In 1986, Mr Zende and his team had obtained enough information to narrow their search to Goa state. They staked out a restaurant, one that was popular with foreigners because it was one of the few places with an overseas telephone link.

After four nights of blending in with the crowd and watching the entrances, Sobhraj showed up.

"At 10.30pm, two men came out of taxis carrying bags. They were wearing sun hats - I wondered why they would do that at night," says Mr Zende.

He recognised the man who was by then wanted internationally for drugging and sometimes killing victims, then stripping them of their belongings, including passports, which he would alter to slip between countries.

"I pounced on him," says Mr Zende, making the motion of wrapping his arms around the wanted man, who called him "crazy" and claimed it was a case of mistaken identity.

Mr Zende then told him: "Don't forget - I am the same person who caught you in 1971."

"He slumped down in his chair," says Mr Zende.

Sobhraj has been in jail in Nepal since 2004 for murders that took place there in the 1970s.

The eight-part Netflix series is the latest in a series of books and shows about the killer who has stayed in the public imagination, partly because of how he was able to gather a coterie of friends and lovers who would act as accomplices.

While imprisoned in Nepal, for example, he and the 20-year-old daughter of his lawyer struck up a relationship and in 2008 claimed to have married, though the legality of the union is disputed by the authorities.

Ask Mr Zende if he sensed any of the legendary Sobhraj charm and he has a short answer.

"I wouldn't know. He didn't want to talk to me," says the retiree of the occasions when he had Sobhraj in his custody.

The Netflix show plays up Sobhraj's magnetic aura, but that aura was nowhere to be seen after the Goa capture.

There was a 14-hour car ride back to Mumbai, during which he said little. Given his escape-artist reputation, his hands and feet were bound with rope, with officers "sitting on him" as an extra precaution, says Mr Zende.

So how did Sobhraj use the toilet?

"There was a tin cup," says Mr Zende.

The retiree hopes the renewed interest in the Sobhraj case brought about by the Netflix show will shine a light on the work of the police in the state of Maharashtra as well as the transport and hospitality workers whose cooperation led to his capture.

"It's like in football. Other people kicked the ball to me. I was fortunate enough to be near the goalpost at the time."