Notorious French murderer Charles Soubrage, who was the focus of the BBC series ‘The Snake’, will be released from a prison in Nepal, following a court ruling to that effect.
Orders have been issued to deport Sobraj, who spent 19 years in prison for killing tourists in Kathmandu in 1975, to France within 15 days.
Sobhraj was linked to a string of other murders of tourists in the 1970s and spent 20 years in prison in India.
Most of his victims were young Westerners who roamed India and Thailand.
Subraj was serving two life sentences, each of 20 years, in Nepal’s capital for the murder of an American woman, Connie Jo Brunsich, and her Canadian friend, Laurent Carrier.
He had been convicted in two separate trials, most recently in 2014 when he was sentenced to 20 years in maximum security prison for the murder of Carrier.
But Nepal’s Supreme Court ordered Subraj’s release on Wednesday after his legal team successfully petitioned for a reduced sentence due to his age and good behavior.
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A provision of Nepalese law allows for the release of convicts who have behaved well and have served 75% of their prison sentence.
Agence France-Presse said the verdict said “continuously keeping him in prison is not in line with the prisoner’s human rights” and pointed to regular treatment for heart disease as another factor in his release. His lawyer says he could be released on Thursday.
Sobhraj has been linked to more than 20 homicides between 1972 and 1982, in which victims were drugged, strangled, beaten or burned.
He has been nicknamed “The Snake” or “Bikini Killer” due to his talent for cross-dressing and his ability to escape from prison and target young women. Around him revolved a successful series for both the BBC and Netflix, released in 2020.
Before being sentenced twice in Kathmandu, Sobhraj had already spent two decades in prison in India for poisoning a busload of French tourists.
During that time he managed to escape from prison for a short time by drugging prison guards. He later claimed the escape was a ploy to extend his sentence and avoid extradition to Thailand, where he was wanted for five other murders.
Following his release from India, Subraj was arrested for the murder of Brunsic after he was spotted in a casino in Kathmandu in 2003.