French serial killer Charles Sobhraj, also known as the “Serpent”, was released from prison in Nepal this Friday.
The Supreme Court in Kathmandu ruled Wednesday that Sobhraj, 78, who has been in jail in the Himalayan republic since 2003 for two killings decades earlier, should be immediately released and deported within 15 days.
This came after he needed open heart surgery in 2017, the verdict of release was in keeping with the law allowing the compassionate discharge of bedridden prisoners who have served three-quarters of their sentence.
Sobhraj, known to many as a ruthless con-artist and murderer. He was linked to the deaths of at least 20 western travelers in Thailand, India and Nepal during the 1970s and 80s but became known as “the serpent” for his charm and slippery ability to evade arrest.
Sobhraj was freed this morning, Friday, his lawyer Gopal Shiwakoti Chintan told reporters that he stayed in the Central Jail yesterday, and “will be sent to the immigration department on Friday.”
“If a request for expulsion is notified to them, France would be required to grant it since Sobhraj is a French national.”
Sobhraj began traveling the world in the early 1970s and wound up in the Thai capital Bangkok.
Posing as a gem trader, he would befriend his victims, many of them Western backpackers on the 1970s hippie trail, before drugging, robbing and murdering them.
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