Charles Sobhraj.Photo: PRAKASH MATHEMA/AFP via Getty
Serial killer Charles “The Serpent” Sobhraj, whose life is depicted in theNetflix seriesThe Serpent, is set to be released from jail, Nepal’s top court ordered Wednesday.
French citizen Sobhraj, 78, who is of Indian and Vietnamese descent, will go free based on poor health, good behavior and having served most of his 20-year sentence,CBS Newsreported, noting that he has heart disease.
“Keeping him in the prison continuously is not in line with the prisoner’s human rights,” the court said in its verdict, according to the AFP.
Sobhraj was serving two separate life sentences, each twenty years, for the killings of American Connie Jo Bronzich, 29, and her Canadian backpacker friend Laurent Carrière, 26, in 1975. He was not convicted of Bronzich’s murder until 2004, and for Carrière’s demise until 2014.
Fox News reported the 2004 conviction was the first time he was found guilty in court.
But he is suspected of at least twenty more murders between 1972 and 1982,BBCreported, saying victims were drugged, strangled, beaten or burned. Most killings took place along “the hippie trail,” which runs from Turkey to Iran, and included murders in Afghanistan, India, Thailand, Turkey, Nepal, Iran and Hong Kong.
NBC Newsreported that he drugged the food or drink of the Western backpackers while he robbed them.
Charles Sobhraj.PRAKASH MATHEMA/AFP via Getty
Sobhraj earned the nicknames “The Serpent” and “Bikini Killer” for his use of deceptive disguises, ability to escape prison and tendency to target young women, BBC reported.
Before he was convicted in Nepal, he spent two decades in jail in India for poisoning a busload of French tourists in New Delhi in 1976, BBC and NBC News reported.
The convict claimed he was trying to get his sentence lengthened to avoid extradition to Thailand, where he was wanted for drugging and killing a group of women in the mid-1970s, some of whom turned up dead on a beach near Pattaya resort, BBC and NBC News reported.
While jailed in India, he bribed guards with gems and cash, and gave paid interviews to western journalists, in which he would detail his killings and crimes,The Guardianreported.
He was released in 1997 and returned to Paris, where he continued to give paid interviews, according to the outlet. In 2003, he returned to Nepal, where there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest and he was spotted at a casino in Kathmandu soon before he was arrested.
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What’s next? “He will be deported within 15 days,” lawyer Lok Bhakta Rana said, according toThe Guardian. “From the jail, they will send him to the immigration office, which will be a cell. They are processing his deportation and he could go much earlier.”
In 2008, while jailed, Sobhraj married Nihita Biswas, a Nepalese woman who is 44 years younger and the daughter of his lawyer.
source: people.com
