- Charles Sobhraj served as the basis for award-nominated TV show “The Serpent”.
- Nepal’s highest court released him Wednesday owing to his age and health.
- Authorities claim he will be deported to France within 15 days.
The famed French serial killer Charles Sobhraj, who served as the basis for the award-nominated TV show “The Serpent,” was released from a Nepali prison on Friday.
“Sobhraj has been released from the jail. He has been handed over to the immigration department. The officials at the immigration department informed us that he would be deported to France soon, as early as today,” Ishwari Prasad Pandey, an official at Nepal Central prison told Media.
Sobhraj, who was 78 years old, was serving a life sentence in Nepal for the 1975 murder of two tourists, but many of his claimed killings are still unsolved.
He was released after Nepal’s highest court approved his release on Wednesday due to his advanced age and failing health.
According to the court, he needs open heart surgery because of a heart condition.
Local authorities claimed that Sobhraj would be deported immediately and as soon as this Friday.
“We are working on gathering all the necessary travel documents to deport Sobhraj to France,” the acting Director General of the Nepal immigration department Pradarshani Kumari told Media, adding that “it could happen today (Friday), it might take a few days.”
“The court’s order is to send him to his home country within 15 days. We are working to deport him keeping that timeframe in mind. He will remain under the supervision of Nepal’s government until he flies out. We are working with the home ministry on his safety,” Kumari added.
The department maintains frequent communication with the French embassy in Kathmandu, according to the official.
Sobhraj, a Vietnamese national who was born in Saigon under French rule, was imprisoned for the first time in Paris in 1963 for breaking and entering.
Since then, he has been charged with crimes across a number of nations, including France, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, India, Thailand, and Malaysia.
He also managed to break out of jail in a number of different nations, earning him the moniker “The Serpent” for his propensity to elude capture.
According to his biographers, Sobhraj eventually confessed to at least 12 homicides between 1972 and 1976 and hinted at a few more during interviews before retracting the confessions in advance of subsequent court proceedings.
Unknown is the true number of his victims.
A Nepali court found Sobhraj guilty in 2014 and sentenced him to 20 years in prison for killing Canadian tourist Laurent Carrière in 1975.
The purported killings of Sobhraj are the subject of the 2021 reupdated media outlet/Netflix thriller “The Serpent.” It describes how he reportedly drugged, stole, and killed hikers along the so-called “hippie trail” across Asia for years while Herman Knippenberg, a former Dutch diplomat, collaborated with police enforcement to apprehend him.
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