Charles Sobhraj, the notorious French serial killer who served as the inspiration for the award-nominated TV series “The Serpent,” was ordered to be released from prison on Wednesday by Nepal’s highest court.
According to the court’s spokeswoman Bimal Paudel, the ruling was based on the man’s age and health.
Sobhraj, who was 78 years old, was serving a life sentence in a prison in the Bhaktapur area of Kathmandu for the 1975 slaying of two tourists, but many of his claimed killings are still unsolved.
The Supreme Court’s two-judge panel mandated that the government free him at once and deport him to “his homeland” within 15 days, the spokeswoman added.
According to the court, Sobhraj needs open heart surgery since he has a heart condition.
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.
Also Read
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.
