Charles Sobhraj has been serving a prison sentence in Nepal since 2003
French serial killer Charles Soubraj, better known as ‘The Serpent’, has left Nepal after being released from prison.
Sobraj, 78, was convicted of killing several tourists in Asia in the 1970s.
Subraj was released after a court ruled, due to his advanced age and good behavior.
Sobhraj spent 19 years in a Nepalese prison for killing two Americans in 1975.
Most of Subraj’s victims were young Western men and women known as hippies. The thug allegedly raided them on their travels to India and Thailand.
Sobraj was deported to France on Friday and banned from returning to Nepal for at least 10 years.
The television drama dealt with the story of serial killer Sobraj, in a series called ‘The Serpent’ or The Serpent.
At one time, Sobraj served two 20-year prison sentences in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, for the 1975 murder of an American woman named Connie Jo Brunsich and her Canadian friend, Laurent Carrier.
Sobhraj was convicted in two separate trials, the latest of which took place in 2014, and was sentenced to maximum security prison after being convicted of murdering Canadian Carrier.
But Nepal’s Supreme Court ordered Subraj’s release on Wednesday after his defense team successfully applied for a health-related pardon.
The French butcher underwent heart surgery in 2017.
Nepali law permits the release of prisoners who have demonstrated good behavior and have served 75% of their sentences.
In an interview with Agence France-Presse, Subraj said before his departure on Friday that he was delighted to be freed but would take legal action against the Nepalese government.
Charles Sobrague spoke to the press on a plane following his release
Subraj’s name has been linked to more than 20 murders that occurred between 1972 and 1982. The victims of these crimes were drugged, suffocated, beaten or burned.
Sobraj has been nicknamed the Snake or the Bikini Killer, due to his talent for cross-dressing, his ability to break out of prison, and his tendency to target young women. In 2021, the BBC and the Netflix platform broadcast the series Serpent, which deals with the dramatic story of Sobraj.
Prior to his conviction for the two Kathmandu murders, Sobraj had spent 20 years in prison in India as punishment for poisoning a group of French tourists.
Meanwhile, Subraj managed to escape from prison by drugging the guards. He later claimed he did it to extend his prison sentence so he wouldn’t be deported to Thailand, where he was wanted for five other murders.
Thai authorities had issued an arrest warrant for Sobraj in the mid-1970s on charges of drugging and killing six women, the bodies of some of which were found on a beach near the Pattaya resort.
Following his release from India in 1997, Sobhraj returned to France, where he lived in Paris and interviewed journalists. But he returned to Nepal and was arrested there in 2003 for the murder of the American Brunsich after he was in a hotel in the capital, Kathmandu.
