He has never stood trial for the alleged murders in Thailand. The Serpent: Chilling Pictures of the Real Killer, Charles Sobhraj. Sobhraj, now in his mid-70s, has suffered health problems in recent years and is seeking to be released from jail. In 2014, he was also convicted of the 1975 murder of Laurent Carriere. In 2003, Sobhraj was arrested in a Kathmandu casino and later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1975 murder of Connie Bronzich. He lived in France, where he has citizenship. He was released from jail in 1997 after the warrant for his extradition to Thailand ran out. He was jailed for various charges and served 20 years, briefly escaping in 1986 after drugging the prison guards with poisoned sweets. These are some of the people Sobhraj is believed to have killed in 19.Ĭharles Sobhraj was arrested in 1976 for drugging a busload of French students in New Delhi, India. His spate of killings in Thailand became known as the "bikini murders" as some of his victims were found in their swimsuits, while he was also given the moniker "the serpent" for his ability to change his appearance and identity. Nihita’s mother represented Charles Sobhraj in the Supreme Court of Nepal however, she failed to get her client acquitted. Nihita’s parents parted ways when she was a child.
Her father was a Bengali businessman from Kolkata, while her mother was a well-known Nepali lawyer. The victims, often backpackers, would be befriended, drugged, then murdered by Sobhraj, who would steal any money they had and their passports to help him evade capture. Like Charles Sobhraj, Nihita is also a product of a mixed marriage. He also claimed Leclerc and his associate Ajay Chowdhury had carried out some of the murders, but the truth of these crimes will likely never be known. In the book The Life And Crimes Of Charles Sobhraj, Sobhraj confessed to murdering five people in Thailand and two people in Nepal. ( AFP: Prakash Mathema)Ĭharles Sobhraj is believed to have murdered more than a dozen people, but the exact number is not known. That book and others have shaped the story of the killings, but the show was heavily influenced by the real-life experiences of Knippenberg, played by Billy Howle. The book was written by Australian journalists Julie Clarke and Richard Neville in 1979.Ĭlarke and Neville interviewed Sobhraj in prison in Delhi, India, after the rights to his life story were sold to publisher Random House. Rahim said he wanted to play Sobhraj, having read The Life And Crimes Of Charles Sobhraj when he was a teenager. Sobhraj is played by Tahar Rahim, who has the titular role in Jodie Foster and Benedict Cumberbatch's 2021 film The Mauritanian. The Serpent is inspired by real events and focuses on the pursuit of Charles Sobhraj and his girlfriend Marie-Andrée Leclerc by Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg in the late 1970s.
The series aired in the UK on New Year's Day and became BBC iPlayer's most popular new BBC program since the limited drama series, Normal People. The Serpent is available on Netflix from Friday, April 2 and is made up of eight episodes, each one hour long. Sobhraj, who befriended, drugged then murdered young Western backpackers in the 1970s, has this year achieved notoriety due to the popular limited series, The Serpent.
According to the Telegraph, this is factually accurate and a nod to Compagnon’s conservative, Catholic background (in her marrying a mixed race ex-con).Charles Sobhraj isn't a name many would recognise, but just a few decades ago the serial killer and conman was one of Asia's most wanted criminals. It’s an intimate ceremony, just Charles’ mother, and the parents of Compagnon, who look thoroughly disapproving. The series goes back to Paris 1969, when a 24-year-old Sobhraj, fresh from a stint in prison, is marrying young Frenchwoman Chantal Compagnon, renamed in the show as Juliette. In real life, Sobhraj was reportedly married at least twice, and fathered a minimum of three children. It’s only in episode six that you are introduced to Juliette, Sobhraj’s former wife. Her role is part-conspirator, part-lamentable victim, part-lover in the series. Up until episode six, his lead romantic entanglement is with his girlfriend and accomplice, Marie-Andrée Leclerc, brilliantly played by Jenna Coleman. It is a darkly stylish thriller about the real-life killer Charles Sobhraj’s spree of attacks along the Hippie Trail in the 1970s. Sobhraj was adopted by his mother’s French boyfriend and taken to France, along with his younger sister Nicole. Isn’t The Serpent gripping? Each episode writhingly compelling – making each hour-long instalment something of a physical ordeal (but one you’d choose to undergo). Charles Sobhraj was born Hatchand Bhaonani Gurumukh Charles Sobhraj in Saigon in 1944 to an Indian Sindhi businessman (Sobhraj Hatchand Bhaonani) and a Vietnamese shop worker (Tran Loan Phung).