Paris: Charles Sobhraj, infamous as the bikini killer, reached France on Saturday after being released from jail in Nepal. He was serving life sentence in jail. French national Charles Shobhraj was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1970 for the deaths of American and Canadian tourists. Her parents were of Indian and Vietnamese descent. He had confessed to killing several Western tourists across Asia.
The web series ‘The Serpent’ aired on BBC and Netflix is made on the life of Sobhraj. He is also known as the ‘Bikini Killer’ as he often targeted young women. Sobhraj reached Paris airport on Saturday by plane from Nepal via Qatar. His French lawyer Isabel Count Payre gave this information.
Peyre welcomed Sobhraj’s release. “I am very happy but also very surprised that it took 19 years to get her freedom,” he said at the airport. Peyre said his murder conviction in Nepal was a “fabricated case based on false documents”. He said that Sobhraj will now be at ease as he is back in France.
The French government is yet to comment on whether Sobhraj will face judicial challenges in France. Sobhraj is believed to have killed at least 20 people in Afghanistan, India, Thailand, Turkey, Nepal, Iran, and Hong Kong in the 1970s. He spent more than two decades in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail on suspicion of theft but was extradited to France in 1997. He was found again in Kathmandu in 2003 and the following year he was convicted of killing American and Canadian tourists in Nepal.
Sobhraj had been held in a high-security prison in Nepal since 2003 when he was arrested on charges of murdering American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975. He was later found guilty of killing Bronzich’s Canadian friend, Laurent Carriere, and served 19 years out of a 20-year sentence.
But he was suspected of more murders, including in Thailand, where police say he killed six women in the 1970s, some of whom turned up dead on a beach near the resort of Pattaya.
He was jailed in India for poisoning a group of French tourists in the capital, New Delhi, in 1976, before he could stand trial on the charges against him in Thailand.
The life sentence in Nepal is 20 years. Announcing his release this week, Nepal’s Supreme Court said he had already served more than 75 percent of his sentence and had been on good behavior in prison, allowing him to be released, and also had a heart condition. Is. Advocate Gopal Shivkoti Chitan said Sobhraj was released on Friday and ordered to leave Nepal within 15 days. Money received from a friend bought Sobhraj’s ticket and the French embassy in Kathmandu prepared the necessary travel documents to fly him, he said.
