Charles Sobhraj, a French serial murderer who committed multiple killings in Asia during the 1970s, said he felt “glad” after leaving the Nepalese jail where he had spent nearly 20 years.
“I’m feeling terrific. I’ve got a lot to do. I have several individuals I want to sue. Included in this are the states of “As he was being transported to Nepal, Sobhraj spoke to AFP. France. The 78-year-old said, “Yeah, yes,” when asked whether he believed that his status as a serial murderer had been incorrectly assigned.
On Wednesday, the Nepalese Supreme Court decided that he should be freed for medical reasons and deported to France within 15 days. He was released this Friday and boarded a plane at Kathmandu airport via Doha for Paris, where he was due to land early Saturday.
“Bikini Killer”Charles Sobhraj
Sobhraj’s life was chronicled in the Netflix and BBC co-produced series, The Serpent. Sobhraj was born in Saigon to a Vietnamese mother who subsequently wed a Frenchman and an Indian father. Sobhraj started an international criminal career before arriving in Thailand in 1975.
In the 1970s, he pretended to be a gem dealer and made friends with his victims, many of whom were Western hikers travelling the hippie trails. He then drugged, robbed, and killed them. He was engaged in the death of a young American woman, whose corpse was discovered in a bikini on a beach in 1975.
He subsequently acquired the moniker “Bikini Killer” and was implicated in over 20 homicides. He was detained in India in 1976, and after serving a total of 21 years there in jail, he briefly escaped in 1986 by drugging the guards. He was filmed in Goa, an Indian state on the seashore.
Released in 1997, Sobhraj lived in Paris and gave paid interviews to journalists, but returned to Nepal in 2003. The question of “Karma”.
One of the founders of the Himalayan Times newspaper, writer Joseph Nathan, saw him playing baccarat at a casino and had him detained.
“He looked innocent … It was pure luck that I recognized him,” Nathan told AFP on Thursday. “I think it was karma.”
The next year, a Nepali court gave Sobhraj a life sentence for the 1975 murder of American tourist Connie Jo Bronzich. He was also convicted guilty of murdering Bronzich’s Canadian partner ten years later. Sobhraj asserted his innocence of both killings while he was incarcerated and said he had never visited Nepal prior to the trip that resulted in his arrest.
In 2008, while he was in prison in Nepal, he married lawyer Nihita Biswas, 44 years his junior. Health and family are now her priorities, she told reporters in Kathmandu.
“I really didn’t, and I think I’m going to get out,” he told AFP in 2007 during an interview at Kathmandu central prison.
Thai police officer Sompol Suthimai, whose collaboration with Interpol contributed to the 1976 arrest, had been pushing for his extradition to Thailand where he was charged with murder. But on Thursday he told AFP he had no objection to the release because he and the criminal he was prosecuting were now too old.
“I don’t have feelings for him now that it’s been so long,” said Suthimai, 90. “I think he’s already paid for his actions.”
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