Charles Sobhraj, a convicted killer who police imagine killed greater than 20 western backpackers on a “hippie trail” through Asia within the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties, returned to France on Saturday after nearly 20 years behind bars in Nepal.
Nepal’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the discharge of Sobhraj, known in Thailand because the “Bikini Killer” and “Snake” for evading police, citing his advanced age and health.
A French citizen whose father is Indian and mother is Vietnamese, Sobhraj, 78, landed at Paris’s essential international airport shortly after 7am and was escorted off the plane by police for an identity check.
“He’s wonderful, he’s a free man,” Sobhraja’s lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre told Reuters. When asked what his next steps could be, she said: “He’ll file a legal criticism against Nepal since the whole case against him has been fabricated.”
Sobhraj has been held in a maximum security prison in Nepal since 2003, when he was arrested on suspicion of murdering American tourist Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975. He was later found guilty of killing Bronzich’s Canadian friend Laurent Carriere and served 19 years of a 20-year sentence.
![Sobhraj, pictured leaving a hearing in Kathmandu in May 2011.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/2022-12-24T071640Z_1932277299_RC26CY9FRLML_RTRMADP_3_FRANCE-SOBHRAJ.jpg?w=1024)
But he has been suspected of more murders, including in Thailand, where police say he killed six women within the Nineteen Seventies, a few of whom were found dead on a beach near the Pattaya resort.
He was imprisoned in India for poisoning a gaggle of French tourists within the capital, Recent Delhi, in 1976 before he could stand trial on the costs against him in Thailand.
Sobhraj told French news agency AFP on a flight from Nepal that he was not guilty of murdering Bronzich and Carriere.
“I actually have plenty of work to do. I actually have to sue plenty of people,” Sobhraj is quoted as saying by AFP.
![Sobhraj at Doha airport waiting for his flight to France.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/GettyImages-1245802135.jpg?w=985)
Associates had previously described Sobhraj as a fraudster, seducer, robber and murderer.
In 2021, the BBC and Netflix produced a drama series based on the story of Sobhraj’s alleged killings.
The French interior and justice ministries didn’t respond to Reuters questions on whether Sobhraj could face criminal charges in France. The statute of limitations for probably the most serious crimes in France is 20 years.