Charles Sobhraj is expected to release shortly.

On Wednesday, Nepal's highest court ordered the release of the 78-year-old French serial killer responsible for a series of murders across Asia in the 1970s. The Supreme Court ruled that the Frenchman portrayed in the Netflix series "The Serpent" imprisoned in the Himalayan republic since 2003 for the murder of two North American tourists, was to be released for health reasons, according to the verdict of justice.

"To keep him continuously in prison is not in conformity with the human rights of the prisoner", write the magistrates in the document.

“If there are no other cases pending against him to keep him in prison, this court orders his release today and (…) the return to his country within fifteen days.

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21 years spent in prison

After a troubled childhood and several stints in prison in France for minor crimes, Sobhraj began traveling the world in the early 1970s and ended up in Thailand's capital, Bangkok.

His modus operandi was to charm and befriend his victims, often spiritually-seeking Western backpackers, before drugging, robbing and murdering them.

His involvement in a first murder dates back to 1975 when the body of a young American was found on a beach in Pattaya in a bikini.

Described as gentle and sophisticated, he is linked to around twenty murders.

His victims were strangled, beaten, or burned, and he often used the passports of his male victims to travel to his next destination.



Sobhraj's nickname, "the Serpent", comes from his ability to assume other identities to escape justice.

He was arrested in India in 1976, after the poisoning death of a French tourist in a Delhi hotel, and was sentenced to twelve years in prison for murder.

Sobhraj eventually spent 21 years in prison, with a brief break in 1986 when he escaped before being arrested again in the Indian coastal state of Goa.

Released in 1997, he retired to Paris but resurfaced in 2003 in Nepal, where he was spotted in the tourist district of Kathmandu and arrested.

The following year, a court sentenced him to life in prison for killing American tourist Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975. Ten years later, he was also found guilty of murdering Connie Bronzich's Canadian girlfriend.


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Charles Sobhraj, the French serial killer who bloodied the Indian subcontinent

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