French serial killer Charles Sobhraj
(Picture: REUTERS)A serial killer dubbed ‘The Serpent’ and who inspired the BBC drama of the same name has walked free from a Nepalese prison.
A court allowed the release of Charles Sobhraj, 78, ending nearly 20 years of captivity, citing good behaviour and his age.
He has been ordered back to his native France within 15 days.
Sobhraj was driven out of Central Jail in Kathmandu in a heavily guarded police convoy to the Department of Immigration, where he will wait for his travel documents to be prepared.
Sobhraj spent 19 years in jail for murdering two tourists in Kathmandu in 1975 and has been linked to a string of other tourist murders in the 1970s.
His victims were mostly young Western backpackers on the hippie trail in India and Thailand.
His crimes inspired the BBC/Netflix drama The Serpent starring Jenna Coleman, with French actor Tahar Rahim playing the slippery killer himself.
Sobhraj, 78, a French national, is suspected of killing more than 20 Western backpackers on the "hippie trail" through Asia, usually by drugging their food or drink in the course of robbing them.
Nepal's Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered his release from prison, where he has served 19 years of his 20-year sentence, citing his age.
“Keeping him in the prison continuously is not in line with the prisoner’s human rights,” the verdict read, according to AFP, and cites regular treatment for heart disease as another factor in his release. He had heart surgery in 2017.
He had been held in a high-security jail in Kathmandu since 2003, when he was arrested on charges of murdering American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975, and had served 19 years out of a 20-year sentence.
Life sentences in Nepal are 20 years.
Sobhraj denied killing the American woman and his lawyers said the charge against him was based on assumption.
Several years later he was also found guilty of killing Bronzich's Canadian friend, Laurent Carriere.
But he was suspected of many more murders.
Thailand, where he was known as the "bikini killer", issued a warrant for his arrest in the mid-1970s on charges of drugging and killing six women, 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.
Sobhraj escaped from India's Tihar jail in 1986 after drugging prison guards with cookies and cakes laced with sleeping pills.
Days later, police caught him at a restaurant in the Indian beach holiday state of Goa.
He was jailed in India until 1997 when returned to France.
In 2003, he was arrested in Kathmandu, in connection with the 1975 murders of Bronzich and Carriere, after being spotted at a casino.
