Charles Sobhraj to be freed today, immigration sending France today

KATHMANDU: Charles Sobhraj’, a French citizen who has been imprisoned on murder charges for nearly two decades, will be released today. Sobhraj will be released from prison, according to orders issued by the Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday and the courts of Kathmandu and Bhaktapur on Thursday.

Sobhraj will be handed over to the Immigration Department today by the Central Jail Administration, who will return him to France.

The jail was planning to release Sobhraj to the immigration department on Thursday evening. However, the department has requested that he be brought to the jail today, demonstrating why a separate ‘detention room’ be established.

Sobhraj, the ‘bikini killer,’ was sentenced to life in prison for the 1975 murders of American citizen Connie Jo Boronzich, 29, and his Canadian girlfriend Laurent Carrière, 26.

Due to his age and health condition, as well as prison regulations, the SC had ordered that the notorious killer be released and deported to his home country within 15 days via immigration.

Based on that, the Bhaktapur court, which heard the case against Sobhraj, sent a letter to the prison in order to carry out the Supreme Court’s decision.

However, after two cases of killing industry and fake passport were filed against Sobhraj in the Kathmandu District Court, the prison management department requested the Kathmandu court to make the necessary decision on the matter, and the court told it to do as per the order of the Supreme Court, and the release process proceeded.

Arrested on September 19, 2003, Sobhraj’s lifetime imprisonment would have ended on September 18 next year. The French citizen with Vietnamese and Indian parentage committed a string of murders across Asia in the 1970s.

Sobhraj, who has been implicated in more than 20 killings, served 21 years in prison in India for poisoning a French tourist and killing an Israeli national.