Charles Sobhraj, the notorious French serial killer of Indian and Vietnamese origin, accused of murdering at least one and a half dozen people across Asia in the 1970s and was sentenced to life, was on Friday taken to the airport as he was deported by Nepal government to France, hours after he was released from Central Jail.
Sobhraj, 78, was released from the Central Jail in Kathmandu and handed over to the immigration authorities to process his travel documents, officials said, two days after the Supreme Court ordered that he be released and deported to his home country.
According to his lawyer Gopal Shivakoti Sobhraj was taken to Tribhuvan International Airport here to be deported to France. He would first fly to Doha and then to Paris on a Qatar Airways flight. at 6 PM he said.
Earlier, he had requested to be admitted to the Gangalal Hospital for follow up treatment for ten days. He had heart surgery there in Kathmandu in 2017.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court directed the prison management authority to free the notorious killer, and deport him to France within 15 days through immigration, unless he is wanted in some other case.
A division bench of justices Sapana Pradhan Malla and Til Prasad Shrestha who had asked the government to arrange for his repatriation to France, concluded that Sobhraj should be freed as he has already completed 95 per cent of his jail term.
Dubbed “the Bikini Killer” for his proclivity to target young women, particularly young western backpackers, and “the Serpent” for his skill at deception and evasion, Sobhraj was serving a life-term in the Kathmandu jail since 2003 for the murder of American woman Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975 in Nepal. In 2014, he was convicted of killing Laurent Carriere, a Canadian backpacker, and given a second life sentence.
Arrested on September 19, 2003, Sobhraj’s lifetime imprisonment would have ended on September 18 next year. Sobhraj, who committed a string of murders across Asia in the 1970s, has been implicated in more than 20 killings, and served 21 years in prison in India for poisoning a French tourist and killing an Israeli national.
The order by the division bench of Nepal’s top court came after Sobhraj filed a plea claiming that he was put in prison for more than the period recommended for him. There is a legal provision to release prisoners who have completed 75 per cent jail term and showed good character during imprisonment.
Sobhraj, through his petition, claimed that he had completed his jail term as per the ‘concessions’ entitled to senior citizens of Nepal. Sobhraj was spotted in a Kathmandu casino in August 2003 and arrested. He was slapped with a life sentence for the murder after a trial.
Before the departure Sobhraj had to pay fees and fines amounting to Rs. 70 thousand for the immigration violations and preparing for travel documents. The Immigration Department had prepared his travel documents in collaboration with the French Embassy in Kathmandu to facilitate his departure, according to his lawyers.
Although his so called spouse Nihita Bishwas, whom he reportedly married in the jail in 2008, and her mother Shakuntala, also a lawyer, were present at the immigration office and at the Kathmandu airpot during departure, they were not allowed to meet him.
Sobhraj, arranged money for his air ticket through online to fly to France. He landed in Paris next day morning where her centenary mother and daughter were waiting to welcome him.
