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What is 'Bikini-Killer' Charles Sobhraj Infamous For?

© AFP 2023 PRAKASH MATHEMAIn this photo taken on August 19, 2008, French serial killer Charles Sobhraj (C) is guided by Nepalese policemen towards a waiting vehicle after a court ruling in Kathmandu.
In this photo taken on August 19, 2008, French serial killer Charles Sobhraj (C) is guided by Nepalese policemen towards a waiting vehicle after a court ruling in Kathmandu. - Sputnik India, 1920, 23.12.2022
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The Frenchman killed over 20 young foreigners across Asia between 1972 and 1982 by drugging, strangling, burning or beating them to death.
The notorious 78-year-old murderer Charles Sobhraj was released from a Nepalese prison on Friday at the behest of the country's Supreme Court.
He is being processed and will be deported to his native France, which could take up to 15 days.
Sobhraj is serving his jail term in Nepal for two separate killings — an American woman, Connie Jo Bronzich, and her Canadian backpacker friend, Laurent Carriere, in 1975. Arrested in 2003 for the crime, he was convicted for Carriere's murder in 2014.

According to Nepal's Supreme Court, Sobhraj has already served 75% of his jail term, and thus was released earlier for "good conduct" and considering his deteriorating health.

In 2017, the serial killer underwent open heart surgery.
Before his arrest in Kathmandu in 2003, Sobhraj served 21 years in Indian prison for poisoning a busload of French tourists.

Sobhraj's Background

Born in 1944 to a Vietnamese mother and Indian father in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City, Sobhraj's full name is Hatchand Bhaonani Gurumukh Charles Sobhraj.
He had a traumatic childhood as his parents separated, settling in Asia and France. His mother married a French lieutenant, and they both brought up Sobhraj.
As a teenage boy, he became involved in petty crimes. When he was 19, he was arrested for the first time after being charged with burglary.
In the 1970s, he started traveling across the world where he started posing as a gem trader to befriend his potential victims, most of them backpackers and hippies.
The convicted killer is also known as "Serpent" for his frequent evasions of the police and disguising by using victims' passports or identity cards.

How Sobhraj Got Arrested

In the 1970s, he traveled extensively to India, Nepal, Singapore, Greece, Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Turkey and Iran, where he also committed crimes ranging from car theft to drugging, robbing and killing tourists whom he befriended.
He was arrested in 1976 for the murder of French tourist Jean-Luc Solomon and convicted to 21 years in Delhis' Tihar jail. However, in 1986, he escaped the high-security prison after drugging prison guards with cookies and cakes mixed with sleeping pills.
He was arrested 22 days later from the coastal state of Goa. He was released in 1997.

In one interview, Sobhraj alleged that he escaped from Tihar Jail to get his sentence extended and avoid extradition to Thailand, where he was wanted for five more murders.

It is also believed that he killed at least 14 foreign tourists in Thailand, after which he started living in Paris. In 2003, he moved to Nepal. The reason for shifting his base remains unclear, as he has an outstanding warrant for his arrest in Nepal.
So far, he has been convicted only of three murders.

'Cobra', 'Serpent', and 'Bikini Killer': How Sobhraj Was Featured in Cinematography

Sobhraj's murders have drawn the attention of a number of filmmakers who decided to bring his life to celluloid.
From "The Serpent," a 2021 multipart drama by Netflix to the Hollywood movie Confession of A Serial Killer in 1985, mini TV series: Shadow of the Cobra (1989), the national geographic documentary Charles Sobhraj: The Bikini Killers, all of them are about him.
While Sobhraj is indeed famed as "the Bikini killer", only two of his murders involved bikini-clad women.
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