Sobhraj, who was born in Saigon to an Indian father and a Vietnamese mother who subsequently married a Frenchman, went on an international criminal career and eventually ended up in Thailand in 1975.
Suave and sophisticated, he was charged with the murder of a young American woman whose body was discovered in a bikini on a beach.
Sobhraj dubbed the “bikini murderer,” was finally linked to more than 20 deaths.
He was captured in India in 1976 and was imprisoned for 21 years, with a brief respite in 1986 when he drugged prison guards and fled. He was apprehended in the Indian state of Goa.
Charles Sobhraj house: Where does Charles Sobhraj live in France?
Sobhraj was released in 1997 and resided in Paris, giving paid interviews to journalists until returning to Nepal in 2003.
He was apprehended after writer Joseph Nathan, one of the Himalayan Times’ founders, discovered him playing baccarat in a casino.
Sobhraj, speaking to AFP among bewildered fellow Qatar Airways passengers on Friday, said he was not responsible for the atrocities in Nepal.
“All the judges in Nepal, from the district court to the high court to the supreme court, all were biased against Charles Sobhraj,” he stated.
Sobhraj was released two days after the Nepal Supreme Court ordered his freedom and deportation to his home country.
Sobhraj’s Nepali wife, Nihita Biswas, who he allegedly married in jail in 2008, was waiting for him at the immigration office, but she was not permitted to see him.
The deadly serial murderer had gained the nicknames ‘The Bikini Killer’ and ‘The Serpent’ throughout his murdering rampage in Thailand, Nepal, India, Malaysia, France, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Greece.
