Convicted in Nepal, Frenchman Charles Sobhraj benefited from the law for being sick and will be deported. He terrorized Asia in the 1970s and starred in the Netflix miniseries ‘The Sky and the Serpent’.French serial killer Charles Sobhraj, aka ‘the Serpent’, has been released from a prison in Nepal and will be deported to France this Friday (23/12). Sobhraj terrorized Asia in the 1970s, claiming many victims. Recently, her story came back into the limelight when she was portrayed in the Netflix mini-series “O Paraíso ea Serpente”. “The Nepalese government wants to return him as soon as possible. Sobhraj too,” said Gopal Shiwakoti Chintan, the killer’s lawyer. He was due to leave for France on a Qatar Airways flight later on Friday. Sobhraj, 78, had been imprisoned in Nepal since 2003 for the murder of two North American tourists. The decision to release him was taken on Wednesday by the Supreme Court of Nepal. Suffering from heart problems and requiring surgery, he benefited from a Nepalese law that allows the release of bedridden prisoners who have already served three-quarters of their sentence. The court ordered his deportation within 15 days. “I feel good, I’m flying to Paris,” Sohbraj said by phone, according to British newspaper The Guardian. Ahead of the announcement of his transfer, a spokesman for the French foreign ministry said that in the event of notification of the deportation, France “would be obliged to comply with the request, as Sobhraj is a French citizen”. . Crimes Of Vietnamese and Indian origin, Charles Sobhraj began to travel the world in the early 1970s and ended up settling in the Thai capital, Bankok. There, he would pose as a dealer in gems in order to befriend his victims – most often Western backpackers. Then he drugged, robbed and murdered them. Nicknamed the “bikini killer” in 1975 after the body of an American woman wearing a swimsuit was discovered on a beach in Pattaya, Thailand, Sobhraj has been linked to more than 20 murders in countries including India, Nepal and Thailand – but accounted for only three. The other nickname, “the Serpent”, comes from his charm and his slippery ability to break out of prison. Conviction in India Arrested in India in 1976, Sobhraj spent 21 years behind bars for the murder of French tourist Jean-Luc Solomon. The period became notorious for the luxury he lived in, bribing guards with cash and gems, and for a brief escape in 1986 after drugging prison guards – he was eventually recaptured in the state Indian from Goa. Released in 1997, he returned to Paris. In 2003, thinking of once again escaping the authorities, he went to Nepal. However, he was arrested in the tourist district of Kathmandu. The following year, a court sentenced him to life in prison for the murder of an American tourist, Connie Jo Bronzich, in 1975. Ten years later, he was also found guilty of the murder of his Canadian partner, Laurent Carrière. While in prison in Nepal, Sobhraj married a Nepalese woman 40 years his junior. In 2008, then aged 64, he met lawyer Nihita Biswas, 21, while she was serving as an interpreter in prison. In Thailand, he was charged with killing six travelers and had a decades-old arrest warrant, but he was never extradited to the country to face the charges. the (Lusa, ots)

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