Charles Sobhraj: Wily and ruthless ‘Serpent’ out of jail

PTI, Dec 23, 2022, 5:34 PM IST

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On Friday, Charles Sobhraj was released from a prison in Nepal, adding another chapter to the life and times of the slight, suave killer whose escapades and chilling MO confounded perhaps even the most inventive criminal mind.

At 78, the French national of Indian-Vietnamese descent is now ailing, his name ringing a distant bell even for those not familiar with headlines of the time or the several reel versions detailing his life.

Sobhraj, the stuff of reams of journalistic articles, books and film and TV scripts, has several monikers. ”Bikini Killer” because of what some of his victims were wearing when he killed them and the “Serpent” from his various jail breaks being just two of them.

Suspected to have killed over 20 western backpackers across Asia in the 1970s and 1980s, he had been serving a life-term in Kathmandu jail since 2003 for the murder of American woman Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975 in Nepal. More than a decade later, in 2014, he was convicted of killing Laurent Carriere, a Canadian backpacker and Bronzich’s companion, and given a second life sentence.

”I can escape at will. I can rob at will. I can live exactly as I want,” the man once counted among Asia’s biggest law breakers is believed to have said according to the book ”The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj” by Richard Neville.

Sobhraj was born in Saigon in former French Indochina (present-day Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam). His father abandoned their family when he was still a child, and his mother’s boyfriend, a French lieutenant serving in Indochina, adopted him.

The man, who would go on to make global headlines for his notoriety and ruthless killing, grew up being neglected by his parents in favour of his half-siblings. The troubled childhood led him to take to petty crimes early in his life, according to several published accounts. Sobhraj, believed to turn on his charm when he met women in particular, was initially jailed in Paris in the 1960s for crimes such as burglary and theft. This was also the time he decided to marry his first wife Chantal Compagnon, a young and wealthy Parisian girl.

Many years later, in a Nepal prison in 2008, Sobhraj married Nihita Biswas, 44 years his junior and the daughter of his Nepalese lawyer.

Dr Raamesh Koirala who treated Sobhraj in Nepal writes about the Chantal-Charles romance in his book “Charles Sobhraj: Inside the Heart of the Bikini Killer”.

”On the day they were supposed to get married, Charles was arrested. He had been caught stealing a car. However, nothing could deter Chantal. Her love for Charles was unfailing. Within eight months of his release from prison, the two got married,” it reads.

What followed were a spree of murders and frequent run-ins with law enforcement agencies of several countries, including Greece, France, India, Thailand, Nepal and Malaysia.

Before turning to murder, preying on Western tourists on the 1970s hippie trail and triggering an international manhunt that put him at the top of Iinterpol’s most wanted list, Sobhraj was a consummate con artist who would smuggle drugs and guns across Asia and rob wealthy associates.

Sobhraj is known to use his good looks to his advantage and mastered the distinctive art of ‘befriend-rob-kill’ — his favoured pattern to attack his targets.

In July 1976, his crimes finally began to catch up with him.

This was when Sobhraj and his accomplice were arrested for trying to poison over 30 engineering students in a hotel lobby in New Delhi, India. During the police investigation, it was found that he had also killed a French tourist.

He was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment in Tihar prison for various crimes. However, more than his series of criminal activities, it was his dramatic jailbreak at the highly-guarded Tihar jail in 1986 that hogged headlines across the world — and the cult of the notorious murderer continued to grow.

He executed the great escape by drugging security guards, whom he had served sweets on the pretext of celebrating his birthday. He was soon caught in a restaurant in Goa and was returned to the jail where he was lodged till 1997.

Thirty-six years down the line, O’Coqueiro, the restaurant where he was caught, still continues to serve people and is famous as the place where Sobhraj was arrested.

Former Tihar Jail law officer Sunil Gupta remembers Sobhraj as someone who would make special efforts to dress up when he had to meet women advocates but rather casual in his attire when he had a meeting with their male counterparts.

“Whenever he was supposed to meet any female guest, be it a lawyer or anybody else, he used to make extra effort to dress up properly, apply perfume and look handsome,” Gupta told PTI.

Many believe Sobhraj escaped Tihar to evade his extradition to Thailand where he awaited a death sentence on the charges of drugging and killing six women on a beach in Pattaya.

He served another decade at Tihar from 1986 onwards. During this time, his Thai arrest warrant expired. Released from India in 1997, Sobhraj went back to France but was spotted in Nepal in 2003 when he began his prolonged jail sentence that ended on Friday.

A joint bench of Justices Sapana Pradhan Malla and Tilak Prasad Shrestha ordered that he be freed on grounds of his age and health. The court also asked the concerned authority to arrange for Sobhraj to return to his country within 15 days.

Back home in France, will Sobhraj pen another chapter of his life and crimes?