Charles Sobhraj, the serial killer at the center of “The Serpent”, the Netflix TV series
Sobhraj, the serial killer ‘The Serpent’ made famous by Netflix is back on the loose
They called him the snake. He was one of the most famous serial killers of the last decades of the last century, but also the protagonist of a very popular television series broadcast on Netflix in 2021, “The Serpent” precisely. Now a sensational sentence can set him free, despite the many families who still mourn his confirmed victims and those on which there has never been definitive proof that it was his hand or his poison that killed them.
Charles Gurumukh Sobhraj Hotchand Bhawnani, con man and French passport thief who preyed on Western tourists traveling in the footsteps of hippies in South Asia in the 1970s. He was also known as “the Bikini Killer” for the clothing of many of his victims, Western tourists who wanted to experience the era of liberation of personal and sexual mores in the persuasive shores of South-East Asia. He was later called “the Serpent”, for “his serpent-like ability to avoid detection by the authorities”.
The Supreme Court of Nepal has ordered the release of Charles Sobhraj. According to the spokesman of the court, Bimal Paudel, the decree was issued for reasons of age and health. Sobhraj, 78, was serving a life sentence in a prison in Kathmandu suburb of Bhaktapur for killing two tourists in 1975, but many of his alleged murders remain unsolved. A bench of two Supreme Court justices ordered the government to release him immediately and deport him to “his country” within 15 days, the spokesman added.
The reasons for the sentence that free The Serpent one year after the Netflix series
Sobhraj suffers from heart disease and requires an open heart operation, the court said. Born in Saigon, French-administered Vietnam, Sobhraj was first jailed in Paris in 1963 for burglary, but was later accused of committing crimes in a list of countries: France, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, India, Thailand and Malaysia.
He has also broken out of prison in several countries and his penchant for evading the authorities has earned him the nickname “The Serpent”. According to his biographers, Sobhraj eventually conceded at least 12 homicides between 1972 and 1976 and hinted more to interviewers before retracting the confessions ahead of further trials. The real number of his victims is unknown. In 2014, a Nepalese court convicted Sobhraj of murdering Canadian tourist Laurent Carrière in 1975, giving him a 20-year sentence.
Last year’s Netflix series brought him to everyone’s lips again, before this unexpected sentence that will certainly cause a lot of discussion. Also because he has never repented. Described as “handsome, charming and utterly unscrupulous”, used his looks and cunning to advance his criminal career and gain celebrity status. He also enjoyed the infamy of him. Sobhraj has also been the subject of four biographies, three documentaries, an Indian film titled Main Aur Charles, before the very popular Netflix series.
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