iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
The Supreme Court of Nepal on Wednesday ordered the release of serial killer Charles Sobhraj, who is also known as the ‘bikini killer’ or ‘serpent killer’.
Hearing a habeas corpus petition filed by Sobhraj, a joint bench of Justices Sapana Pradhan Malla and Til Prasad Shrestha ordered his release if he need not be jailed for another case, adding that arrangements be made to return the French citizen back to his country within 15 days.
Sobhraj, infamous for his cunning escapes from the law, was wanted in Nepal for the 1975 murders of Canadian Laddie DuParr and an American woman named Annabella Tremont, both of whom he had befriended in Kathmandu.
It is thought that Sobhraj murdered at least 20 tourists in South and Southeast Asia, including 14 in Thailand. He was convicted and jailed in India from 1976 to 1997. After his release, he retired, promoting his infamy in Paris.
Sobhraj later returned to Nepal in 2003, where he was arrested, tried, and received a life sentence.
Described as “handsome, charming and utterly without scruple”, he used his looks and cunning to advance his criminal career and obtain celebrity status.
He also enjoyed his infamy. Sobhraj has been the subject of four biographies, three documentaries, an Indian film titled Main Aur Charles, and the 2021 eight-part BBC/Netflix drama series The Serpent.
The police arrested Sobhraj in September 2003 from a five-star hotel. In 1996, he had escaped from a prison in New Delhi after it looked likely that he would be extradited to Thailand to face charges of murdering six women, all wearing bikinis, on a beach at Pattaya.
Sobhraj was later rearrested in Goa. He was known to have been living quietly in France since his release from prison in India.
Sobhraj argued in his petition that he has already served 19 years in jail and that he is 78 years old now.
Kathmandu and Bhaktapur district courts had found him guilty for the murders of American and Canadian citizens in 1975.
He was also ruled to have murdered American citizen Connie Jo Bronzich at Manohara in Kathmandu and then Canadian national Laurent Carriere two days later at Sanga in Bhaktapur in December 1975.
In 2010, the Supreme Court had endorsed the life sentence slapped on him by the Kathmandu district court. The Bhaktapur district court had then sentenced him for the murder of the Canadian national in 2014.
Sobhraj had repeatedly filed writ petitions at the Supreme Court, demanding he get the leniency that senior citizens over 70 years get for release from prison.
He sent several such applications, especially around Constitution Day, Democracy Day and Republic Day, hoping for a presidential pardon. Yet, the court had rejected all his writ petitions so far. He had also undergone a heart surgery.
Sobhraj was born in Saigon to an Indian father and Vietnamese mother. His parents were never married and his father denied paternity. Stateless at first, Sobhraj was taken in by his mother’s new husband, a French Army lieutenant stationed in French Indochina.
There he felt neglected in favour of the couple’s later children. Sobhraj continued to move back and forth between Southeast Asia and France with the family.
As a teenager, he began to commit petty crimes; he received his first jail sentence for burglary in 1963, serving time at Poissy prison near Paris.
While imprisoned, Sobhraj manipulated prison officials into granting him special favours, such as being allowed to keep books in his cell. Around the same time, he met and endeared himself to Felix d’Escogne, a wealthy young man and prison volunteer.
In late 2007, news media reported that Sobhraj’s lawyer had appealed to then-French president Nicolas Sarkozy for intervention with Nepal. In 2008, Sobhraj announced his engagement to a Nepali woman, Nihita Biswas, who later participated in the reality show Bigg Boss.
The authenticity of the couple’s relationship was confirmed in an open letter from American conductor David Woodard to The Himalayan Times. On 7 July 2008, issuing a press release through his fiancée Biswas, Sobhraj claimed he was never convicted of murder by any court, and asked the media not to refer to him as a serial killer.
It was claimed that Sobhraj married his fiancée on 9 October 2008 in jail during Bada Dashami, a Nepalese festival. The following day, Nepalese jail authorities dismissed the claim of his marriage. They said that Biswas and her family had been allowed to conduct a tika ceremony, along with the relatives of hundreds of other prisoners.
They further claimed that it was not a wedding but part of the ongoing Dashain festival, when elders put the vermilion mark on the foreheads of those younger than them to signify their blessings.
In July 2010, the Supreme Court of Nepal postponed the verdict on an appeal filed by Sobhraj against a district court’s verdict sentencing him to life imprisonment for the murder of American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975. Sobhraj had appealed against the Kathmandu district court’s verdict in 2006, calling it unfair.
On 30 July 2010, the Supreme Court upheld the life sentence issued by the district court for the murder of Connie Jo Bronzich, plus another year and a Rs2,000 fine for entering Nepal illegally. The seizure of all Sobhraj’s properties was also ordered by the court.
Sobhraj’s supposed wife Biswas and mother-in-law Shakuntala Thapa, a lawyer, expressed dissatisfaction with the verdict, with Thapa claiming that Sobhraj had been denied justice and that the “judiciary is corrupt”. They were charged and sent to judicial custody for contempt of court because of these remarks.
On 18 September 2014, Sobhraj was convicted in the Bhaktapur district court of the 1975 murder of Canadian tourist Laurent Carrière. In 2018, Sobhraj was in critical condition and had been operated on multiple times. He had received several open heart surgeries and was scheduled for more.
