Charles Sobhraj, the “Snake”, released from prison before his deportation to France

It was announced several days ago, now it is effective. Charles Sobhraj, responsible for several murders of young backpackers in Asia in the 1970s, left a prison in Nepal on Friday in a police van.

Prison officials explained that after receiving the court papers, they would turn him over to immigration. The court ordered that he be deported within 15 days to France. This 78-year-old serial killer who inspired the series The snakehe was being transferred to immigration authorities before his deportation to France, police said.

Expulsion

The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that Charles Sobhraj, 78, imprisoned in the Himalayan republic since 2003 for the murder of two American tourists, must be released for health reasons. “Keeping him continuously in prison is not in accordance with the prisoner’s human rights,” the court considered.

The serial killer requires open-heart surgery and his release is in accordance with a Nepalese law that allows the release of bedridden prisoners who have already served three-quarters of their sentences, according to the court.

“Once he has been taken to Immigration, what will happen next will be decided. He has a heart problem, he wants to be treated at Gangalal hospital,” said Gopal Shiwakoti Chintan, his lawyer.

The situation monitored by the French Embassy in Nepal

The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for its part, has made it known that it has not yet officially received, from the Nepali authorities, the request for the expulsion of Charles Sobhraj, but that France will accept it if necessary. If such a request were “notified”, “France would be obliged to grant it since Mr. Sobhraj is a French national,” explained a spokesman for this ministry.

The French Embassy in Nepal is monitoring the situation, the same source said.

Charles Sobhraj, a French national of Vietnamese and Indian descent, began traveling the world in the early 1970s, finding himself in the Thai capital, Bangkok. Posing as a gem dealer, he befriended his victims, often Western backpackers on the trail of 1970s hippies, before drugging, robbing and murdering them.