Charles Sobhraj, the French serial killer, also known as ‘the Serpent’ will be set free from a Nepalese prison, after a court ruling.
Charles Sobhraj, who completed a jail term of 19 years for killing two tourists in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu in 1975, has been ordered to go back to France within 15 days.
Sobhraj was connected to a number of different tourist murders during the 1970s, and spent 20 years in Indian prison.
He mostly killed people who were young Western travelers on the hippie trail in India and Thailand.
The sharp killer had been serving two life sentences, each 20 years, in Kathmandu for killing an American woman, Connie Jo Bronzich, and her Canadian backpacker friend, Laurent Carriere.
He was sentenced in two different trials – latest being in 2014, when he was given 20 years jail term in a high security prison for murdering Carriere.
But Nepal’s Supreme Court ordered Sobhraj’s release on Wednesday after his lawyers successfully filed a request saying he should be given an allowance on his jail term due to his age, 78, and good behavior.
A clause in Nepalese law permits the release of prisoners who have demonstrated excellent moral character and served 75% of their sentence term.
According to AFP, the judgment stated that keeping him in prison continually violated his human rights and listed frequent heart disease medication as another reason for his release. According to his attorney, he might be freed as early as Thursday.
In more than 20 murders that took place between 1972 and 1982 and involved drugging, strangling, beating, or burning the victims, Sobhraj has been implicated.
Because of his propensity for using convincing disguises, ability to break out of jail, and propensity to target young ladies, he was known as “The Serpent” or the “Bikini Killer.” It later served as the name for a popular BBC and Netflix television series about the murderer that premiered in 2020.
Sobhraj had already served two decades in prison in India for poisoning a busload of French tourists before his two convictions in Kathmandu.
By drugging the jail guards during that period, he momentarily succeeded in escaping from custody. In a later interview, he explained that the escape was a plot to lengthen his sentence and prevent his extradition to Thailand, where he was sought for five other killings.
Sobhraj was apprehended for Bronzich’s murder after being freed from prison in India in 2003 after being seen in a Kathmandu casino.
