‘Bikini Killer’ Who Murdered Western Backpackers in Asia Freed From Prison

Nepal has released a notorious serial killer who murdered Western backpackers across Asia in the 1970s and inspired the Netflix drama series The Serpent.

Nepal’s Supreme Court gave the release orders for 78-year-old Frenchman Charles Sobhraj on Wednesday after his legal team successfully argued that he be given concessions because of his age, heart ailments and “good behaviour.” A provision in Nepal’s law allows inmates early release if they show good character. Sobhraj was in prison on charges of murdering two backpackers in the country. 

“Keeping him in the prison continuously is not in line with the prisoner’s human rights,” the verdict read. Sobhraj is expected to be released on Thursday and has been ordered to go back to France within 15 days.

Few criminals have enjoyed the kind of notoriety that Sobhraj has. The man, who is of Indian and Vietnamese parentage, has been linked to over 20 murders between 1972 and 1982 in Thailand, in which the victims were drugged, strangled, beaten and burned. 

Before spending 19 years in Nepal’s prison, he had spent 20 years in Indian prison on various charges such as robbery, fraud and a murder in India, but not for the crimes he committed in Thailand. 

Sobhraj’s methods, especially the way he deceived authorities, earned him the moniker “The Serpent,” while his frequent targeting of young women made some media outlets at the time call him the “Bikini Killer.” 

In India, he is known for some of the most audacious jailbreaks, including breaking out of the Tihar Jail in New Delhi, one of the most high-security prisons in India, by drugging prison guards with cake he had fed them on the pretext of celebrating his birthday. He was caught days later in Goa, India’s hippy paradise beach town. This episode inspired a Bollywood movie, in which Sobhraj himself gave notes to the actor and director while serving time in Nepal’s prison. 

Reports say that Sobhraj engineered his own re-arrest because he wanted to remain in an Indian prison to avoid being extradited to Thailand, where he faced more serious charges of murders of Westerners. 

In 1977, he sold his story to a publishing house, which later turned into the book and TV series On the Trail of the Serpent. One of the authors of the book, Julie Clark, told AFP last year that Sobhraj “despised” backpackers. “He saw them as poor young drug addicts,” she said. "He considered himself as a criminal hero."

UK journalist Andrew Anthony, who interviewed Sobhraj in France in the 1990s, wrote in a 2020 Guardian column that why Sobhraj killed people remains a mystery. 

“The man was careful not to shed any light on the matter… He has always held to the legal argument that, as he’d not been found guilty of any murders, it meant he hadn’t committed any murders,” Anthony wrote. 

“We went around and around the subject, and it became clear that he was more interested in portraying himself as a victim: of Western imperialism, a dysfunctional childhood, racism and institutionalisation,” he said. “He was narcissistic, amusing, teasing and, it had to be said, a psychopath.”

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