Charles Sobhraj back in France, the last secrets of the Serpent

Winter sets in in Kathmandu. During the day, the mercury struggles to climb above 20°C. The cloud of pollution that shrouds the Nepalese capital every morning has taken its end-of-year holidays. The ardent and pure sky, of an admirable Majorelle blue, encourages strolling and indolence. We can see in the distance the peaks of Ganesh Himal, Langtang and Rolwaling, the first foothills of the Himalayas.

More than the upheavals of local political life, the recent appointment as Prime Minister of Sher Bahadur Deuba and the repatriation of the remains of the 1,000 migrant workers who died on the construction sites of the World Cup, in Qatar, a news dominates the news: the release of Charles Sobhraj, alias “the Serpent”, or “the killer in the Bikini”. Popularized by the series co-produced by the BBC and Netflix, in which he was played by Tahar Rahim, the Serpent has just served nineteen years in Nepalese jails for the murder of two female students.

When I entered prison, I had done nothing. Everything was built on false documents

Charles Sobhraj

This Friday, December 23, at 12:22 p.m., there is a crowd around the Jagannath Dewal penitentiary, in Sundhara, in the heart of Kathmandu. About fifty journalists and hundreds of onlookers throng in front of the burnt Sienna steel gates of the central prison. The day before, the new lawyer for the most famous criminal in the Himalayas, Gopal Shivakoti Chintan, wearing sunglasses and wearing a topi, the traditional headgear, boasted in front of the detention centre: “Justice! If he had picked me sooner, he would have been out a long time ago. “ Mane a little crazy more salt than pepper, aquiline nose, nourished verb, Sakuntala Thapa, historical defender of Charles Sobhraj, whose daughter Nihita Biswas, forty-four years her junior, married her client, spoke “of miscarriage of justice , of innocence that finally comes to light”.

More seriously, it is because of his age (78 years old) and because he has served most of his sentence that the Serpent was released. Eleven years before the end of his sentence, scheduled for 2034. According to the Honorable Justice Til Prasad Shrestha, a member of the Supreme Court of Nepal, “detainee Charles Sobhraj is cardiac and suffers from mitral valve prolapse with severe insufficiencies . He has to take five kinds of medicine a day. His doctors invite him to undergo open-heart surgery for his heart condition. Rule 29(2A) of the Prison Rules states that prisoners over the age of 65, who have served 75% of their sentence on the basis of good behavior or those who have become incurable by bed rest are releasable. The writ of habeas corpus was therefore issued to release him”.

Placed in the high security district of Golghar, Sobhraj had lived in total isolation since 2003

In Kathmandu, it is rumored that Nepal was tired of bearing the costs of incarceration of its famous prisoner. Placed in the high-security district of Golghar, the rotunda in Nepali, Sobhraj had lived in total isolation since 2003. “Every month, he was given rice, lentils and vegetables. He had to do the cooking himself,” says Basanta, one of his jailers. “Mister Charles had no contact with the other prisoners, continues another guard, Rama. Ten years ago, an inmate managed to smuggle a gun into the prison and attempted to shoot it. The news has been kept secret until then. But since then, we avoided all contact. »

On December 23, the hunched figure of Charles Sobhraj, wearing a stocking cap and a blue fleece jacket, appeared before rushing into a van. The Serpent was then transferred to the immigration office for deportation to France. His request to stay a few days at the Hyatt Regency hotel with relatives was refused. Paris, which was reluctant to welcome this cumbersome national, ended up accepting with bad grace. Five hours later, he boarded flight QR647 bound for Doha and then Paris, where he took his seat in economy class. Nepal gave him a ten-year travel ban.

He wanted to create a “family” à la Charles Manson

For those who missed the Netflix series, it is worth recalling the journey of this Frenchman, portrayed as a storyteller, seducer and massacrer of hippies. Gurumukh Charles Sobhraj, known as Charles Sobhraj, was born in 1944 in Saigon, French Indochina. He is the adulterine son of a Vietnamese mother and an Indian tailor.

Turbulent, badly in his dark half-blood skin, enuretic until the age of 16, the young Charles proves to be more gifted for crime than for studies. Imprisoned for three years for theft at the age of 18, he married some time after his release, had a child, lived on expediency and larceny. His mother, Song, who would disown him, said of him, “He has the face of an angel, but I think somewhere the devil has slipped into his mind. »

Sobhraj’s career as a major criminal began in Bangkok, Thailand, in 1975. In the City of Angels, he chose two accomplices: Marie-Andrée Leclerc, a Quebecer whom he had seduced and placed under his total control, and a Indian delinquent without superego or pathos, Ajay Chowdhury, of whom he makes his factotum and hired killer. With them, he wants to create a “family” à la Charles Manson, of which he will be the father figure and the deus ex machina. Their modus operandi? They seduce young Western hippies, whom they poison and then brutally kill. If we include two murderous escapades in Nepal and Benares, India, the Serpent and his accomplices will rob and murder nine people. To these proven crimes, for which he was convicted, are added a dozen other alleged murders.

Nihita Biswas, his 34-year-old Nepalese wife, remained in Kathmandu

Arrested in India in 1976, Sobhraj escaped the death penalty by bribing his judges. Sentenced to twelve years in prison in New Delhi, Sobhraj bribes his guards with diamonds. The assassin leads the life of a pasha under bars: television, telephone, fine food and wine… Having become famous, the Serpent, thus nicknamed for his gift of manipulation of human matter, grants interviews where he gives himself the nice role. In 1986, to avoid being extradited at the end of his sentence to Thailand, where he was promised to hang, he dressed up, let himself be picked up three weeks later and received ten additional years in golden prison. He emerged in 1997 free and not subject to trial in Thailand, where the sentences were granted amnesty after twenty years. Make way for a French parenthesis.

Sobhraj moved to Paris, near Belleville, hired Jacques Vergès to represent him, demanded 5,000 euros per interview and led the way. But, in 2003, a dramatic change. The Serpent throws himself into the mouth of the wolf by going to the only nation where his crimes are not prescribed, Nepal. By bravado, considering himself stronger and smarter than the justice of “this country of assholes and bigots of the mountains”, these are his terms. He was caught there and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Serpent gambled and lost. Like at the casino, where he often squandered the poor sums stolen from his victims.

Two days before Christmas, Charles Sobhraj therefore left, alone, for France. Nihita Biswas, his 34-year-old Nepalese wife, full cheeks, greedy lips, remained in Kathmandu. On the plane, filtered glasses and newsboy cap on his head, he was already proclaiming his innocence. ” I’m doing well. I have a lot of things to do. I have to sue many people, including in Nepal. When I entered prison, I had done nothing. Everything was built on false documents. »

The Serpent wants to sue Netflix

Charles Sobhraj is preparing a book with journalist and director Jean-Charles Deniau, as well as a documentary which will be broadcast on Canal+. He will try to get closer to his daughter, Usha, who lives in the United States. His new French lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, is the former partner of Jacques Vergès. She has defended in the past the terrorist Carlos, whom she married in prison, Dieudonné or the father of Mohamed Merah. She categorically denies her client’s health concerns, which are however stipulated in black and white in the grounds of the Nepalese Supreme Court and confirmed by his wife.

The Serpent should also sue Netflix and give its truth compared to the series which depicts him as a cold monster, calculating and terrifying. While he is, according to him, nothing but exquisiteness, generosity and love. And, of course, innocent and white as a dove.