Charles Sobhraj is expected to be released soon. On Wednesday, the highest court in Nepal ordered release The French serial killer is 78 years oldresponsible for a series of murders throughoutAsia in the 1970s the Supreme Court ruled that the Frenchman was portrayed in the series netflix Snake imprisoned in the Himalayan republic since 2003 for the murders of two North American tourists, will be acquitted for health reasons, according to a court ruling.

“Holding him continuously in prison is not in accordance with the human rights of convicts, the judge wrote in the document. If there are no other cases pending against him to keep him in jail, this court orders his release today and […] return to his country within fifteen days. »

21 years spent in prison

After a troubled childhood and several jail terms in France for misdemeanors, Sobhraj began traveling the world in the early 1970s and found himself in the Thai capital, Bangkok. His modus operandi was to charm and befriend his victims, often spiritual-seeking Western backpackers, before drugging, robbing, and killing them.

His involvement in the first murder occurred in 1975 when the body of a young American was found on a beach in Pattaya wearing a bikini. Described as gentle and sophisticated, he is linked to around twenty murders. Her victims were strangled, beaten, or burned, and she often used her male victims’ passports to travel to their next destination.

Sobhraj’s nickname, “Snake”, comes from his ability to assume other identities to escape justice. He was caught in India in 1976, following the poisoning death of a French tourist in a Delhi hotel, and was sentenced to 12 years in prison for murder. Sobhraj eventually spent 21 years in prison, with a brief break in 1986 when he escaped before being arrested again in India’s coastal state of Goa.

Released in 1997, he retired to Paris, but reappeared in 2003 at Nepal, where he was spotted in the tourist area of ​​Kathmandu and arrested. The following year, a court sentenced him to life imprisonment for killing American tourist Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975. Ten years later, he was also found guilty of murdering Connie Bronzich’s Canadian girlfriend.