Charles Sobhraj

Sobhraj was born to Vietnamese shop girl Tran Loan Phung, and Indian Sindhi businessman Sobhraj Hatchand Bhaonani, who was based in Saigon.[5][6] His parents were divorced and his father deserted the family. Stateless at first,[7] Sobhraj was adopted by his mother's new boyfriend, a French Army lieutenant stationed in French Indochina. There he was neglected in favour of the couple's later children. However, Sobhraj continued to move back and forth between Indochina and France with the family.

As a teenager, he began to commit petty crimes and received his first jail sentence (for burglary) in 1963, serving time at Poissy prison near Paris.[8] While imprisoned, Sobhraj eagerly manipulated prison officials into granting him special favours, such as being allowed to keep books in his cell. Around the same time, he met and endeared himself to Felix d'Escogne, a wealthy young man and prison volunteer.[9]

After being paroled, Sobhraj moved in with d'Escogne and spent his time moving between the high society of Paris and the criminal underworld. He began accumulating riches through a series of burglaries and scams. During this time, Sobhraj met and began a passionate relationship with Chantal Compagnon, a young Parisian woman from a conservative family. Sobhraj proposed marriage to Compagnon, but was arrested later the same day for attempting to evade police while driving a stolen vehicle. He was sentenced to eight months in prison, yet Chantal remained supportive throughout the entirety of his sentence. Sobhraj and Chantal were wed upon his release.[10]

Sobhraj, along with a pregnant Chantal, left France in 1970 for Asia to escape arrest. After travelling through Eastern Europe with fake documents, robbing tourists whom they befriended along the way, Sobhraj arrived in Mumbai later the same year. Here, Chantal gave birth to a baby girl, Usha. In the meantime, Sobhraj resumed his criminal lifestyle, running a car theft and smuggling operation. Sobhraj's growing profits went towards his budding gambling addiction.[10]

In 1973 Sobhraj was arrested and imprisoned after an unsuccessful armed robbery attempt on a jewelery store at Hotel Ashoka. Sobhraj was able to escape, with Chantal's help, by faking illness, but was recaptured shortly thereafter. Sobhraj borrowed money for bail from his father, and soon after fled to Kabul.[11] There, the couple began to rob tourists on the Hippie Trail, only to be arrested once again. Again, Sobhraj escaped in the same way he had in India, feigning illness and drugging the hospital guard. Sobhraj then fled to Iran, leaving his family behind. Chantal, although still loyal to Sobhraj, but wishing to leave their criminal past behind, returned to France and vowed never to see him again.[10][12]

Sobhraj spent the next two years on the run, using as many as ten stolen passports. He passed through various countries in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Sobhraj was joined by his younger half-brother, André, in Istanbul. Sobhraj and André quickly became partners in crime, participating in various criminal activities in both Turkey and Greece. The duo were eventually arrested in Athens. After an identity-switch hoax went awry, Sobhraj managed to escape, but his half-brother was left behind. André was turned over to the Turkish police by Greek authorities and served an 18-year sentence.[10][13]

On the run again, Sobhraj financed his lifestyle by posing as either a gem salesman or drug dealer to impress and befriend tourists, whom he then defrauded. In Thailand, Sobhraj met Marie-Andrée Leclerc (1945–1984) from Lévis, Quebec, Canada, a tourist looking for adventure. Dominated by Sobhraj, she quickly became his most devoted follower, turning a blind eye to his crimes and his philandering with local women.

Sobhraj gathered followers by gaining their loyalty; a typical scam was to help his target out of difficult situations. In one case, he helped two former French policemen, Yannick and Jacques, recover missing passports that Sobhraj himself had actually stolen. In another scheme, Sobhraj provided shelter to a Frenchman, Dominique Renelleau, who appeared to be suffering from dysentery; Sobhraj had actually poisoned him. He was finally joined by a young Indian man, Ajay Chowdhury, a fellow criminal who became Sobhraj's second in command.[14][15]

Sobhraj and Chowdhury committed their first (known) murders in 1975. Most of the victims had spent some time with the pair before their deaths and were, according to investigators, recruited by Sobhraj and Chowdhury to join them in their crimes. Sobhraj claimed that most of his murders were really accidental drug overdoses,[16] but investigators state that the victims had threatened to expose Sobhraj, which was his motive for murder. The first victim was a young woman from Seattle. Teresa Knowlton (named Jennie Bollivar in the book Serpentine) was found drowned in a tidal pool in the Gulf of Thailand, wearing a flowered bikini. It was only months later that Knowlton's autopsy, as well as forensic evidence, proved that her drowning, originally believed to be a swimming accident,[17] was murder.

The next victim was a young nomadic Sephardic Jew, Vitali Hakim, whose burnt body was found on the road to the Pattaya resort, where Sobhraj and his growing clan were staying. Dutch students Henk Bintanja, 29, and his fiancée Cornelia Hemker, 25, were invited to Thailand after meeting Sobhraj in Hong Kong.[18] They, like many others, were poisoned by Sobhraj, who then nurtured them back to health in order to gain their obedience. As they recovered, Sobhraj was visited by his previous victim Hakim's French girlfriend, Charmayne Carrou, who had come to investigate her boyfriend's disappearance. Fearing exposure, Sobhraj and Chowdhury quickly hustled Bintanja and Hemker out. Their bodies were found strangled and burned on 16 December 1975. Soon after, Carrou was found drowned and wearing a similar-styled swimsuit to that of Sobhraj's earlier victim, Teresa Knowlton. Although the murders of both women were not connected by investigators at the time, they would later earn Sobhraj the nickname "The Bikini Killer."[18]

On 18 December, the day the bodies of Bintanja and Hemker were identified, Sobhraj and Leclerc entered Nepal using the deceased pair's passports. They met in Nepal and, between 21 and 22 December, murdered Laurent Carrière, 26 (from Canada), and Connie Bronzich, 29 (from the U.S); the two victims were incorrectly identified in some sources as Laddie DuParr and Annabella Tremont. Sobhraj and Leclerc returned to Thailand, using their latest victims' passports before their bodies could be identified. Upon his return to Thailand, Sobhraj discovered that his three French companions had started to suspect him of serial murder, having found documents belonging to the murder victims. Sobhraj's former companions then fled to Paris after notifying local authorities.[18]

Sobhraj's next destination was either Varanasi or Calcutta, where he murdered Israeli scholar Avoni Jacob simply to obtain Jacob's passport. Sobhraj used the passport to travel with Leclerc and Chowdhury – first to Singapore, then to India, and, in March 1976, returning to Bangkok, despite knowing that the authorities there sought him. The clan was interrogated by Thai police in connection with the murders, but they were released because authorities feared that the negative publicity accompanying a murder trial would harm the country's tourist industry.

Meanwhile, Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg and his then wife Angela were investigating the murders of Bintanja and Hemker.[19] Knippenberg had some knowledge of, and had possibly even met, Sobhraj, although the latter's true identity was still unknown to the diplomat, who continued gathering evidence. With the help of a neighbour of Sobhraj's, Knippenberg built a case against him. He was eventually given police permission to search Sobhraj's apartment, a full month after the suspect had left the country. Knippenberg found evidence, including victims' documents and passports, as well as poisons and syringes. The trio's next stop was Malaysia, where Chowdhury was sent to steal gems. Chowdhury was observed delivering the gems to Sobhraj. This was the last time he was ever seen, and neither Chowdhury nor his remains were ever found. It is believed that Sobhraj murdered his former accomplice before leaving Malaysia to continue his and Leclerc's roles as gem salesmen in Geneva.[14] A source later claimed to have sighted Chowdhury in West Germany, but the claim appeared unsubstantiated. The search for Chowdhury continues.[15]

Soon back in Asia, Sobhraj started to build a new criminal "family," starting with two lost Western women, Barbara Smith and Mary Ellen Eather, in Bombay. Sobhraj's next victim was a Frenchman, Jean-Luc Solomon, whose poisoning during a robbery, simply intended to incapacitate him, left him dead.

In July 1976 in New Delhi, Sobhraj, joined by his three-woman criminal clan, tricked a tour group of French post-graduate students into accepting them as tour guides. Sobhraj then drugged them by giving them poisoned pills, which he told them were anti-dysentery medicine. When the drugs took effect quicker than Sobhraj had anticipated, the students began to fall unconscious. Three of the students realised what Sobhraj had done. They overpowered him and contacted the police, leading to his capture. During interrogation, Sobhraj's accomplices, Smith and Eather, quickly buckled and confessed. Sobhraj was charged with the murder of Solomon and all four were sent to Tihar prison, New Delhi while awaiting formal trial.

Smith and Eather attempted suicide in prison during the two years before their trial. Sobhraj had entered with precious gems concealed in his body and was experienced in bribing captors and living comfortably in jail. He turned his trial into a spectacle, hiring and firing lawyers at will, bringing in his recently paroled brother André to assist, and eventually going on a hunger strike. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Leclerc was found guilty of drugging the French students, but was later paroled and returned to Canada when she developed ovarian cancer. She was still claiming her innocence and was reportedly still loyal to Sobhraj when she died at her home in April 1984. She was 38.[10][13]

Sobhraj's systematic bribery of prison guards at Tihar reached outrageous levels. He led a life of luxury inside the jail, with television and gourmet food, having befriended both guards and prisoners. He gave interviews to Western authors and journalists, such as Oz magazine's Richard Neville in 1977 and Alan Dawson in 1984. Neville was accompanied by his future wife, Julie Clarke, who has frequently written about the subject. Clarke has said that Sobhraj sold the rights to his life story to a Bangkok businessman, who sold them on to Random House. Because of Neville's hippie trail connections, Random House offered him a contract to go to Delhi to research the case, even though he and Clarke, both journalists in New York, had no experience of crime reporting. They were out of their depth, having to deal with Sobhraj's 'creepy emissaries' who kept them under surveillance, and arranged for them to visit him in prison, where he described the murders in detail, and she was extremely relieved when they left Delhi.[20]

While Sobhraj freely talked about his murders, he denied what he said about them, and pretended that his actions were in retaliation against "Western imperialism" in Asia.[10][13]

When Sobhraj's sentence was due to end, the 20-year Thai arrest warrant against him would still have been valid, making possible his extradition and almost certain execution. So in March 1986, in his tenth year in prison, Sobhraj threw a big party for his guards and fellow inmates, drugged them with sleeping pills and walked out of the jail. Inspector Madhukar Zende of the Mumbai police apprehended Sobhraj in O'Coqueiro Restaurant in Goa; his prison term was extended by ten years, just as he had hoped. On 17 February 1997, 52-year-old Sobhraj was released with most warrants, evidence and even witnesses against him long lost. Without any country to extradite him to, Indian authorities let him return to France.[10][13]

Sobhraj retired to a comfortable life in suburban Paris. He hired a publicity agent and charged large sums of money for interviews and photographs. He is said to have charged over US$15 million (according to advocate and former police inspector Bishwa Lal Shrestha, who investigated the case, framed the charge sheet and registered the case in court) for the rights to a movie based on his life.[21]

On 1 September 2003 Sobhraj was spotted by a journalist for The Himalayan Times in a casino in Kathmandu. The journalist followed him for a fortnight and then wrote a news report in The Himalayan Times with photographs. The Nepal police saw the report, raided the Casino Royale in Yak and Yeti hotel and arrested a blissfully unaware Sobhraj, who was still gambling there. According to the newspaper, Sobhraj had returned to Kathmandu to set up a mineral water business. The Nepal police reopened the double murder case from 1975 and got Sobhraj sentenced to life imprisonment by the Kathmandu district court on 20 August 2004 for the murders of Bronzich and Carrière.

Most of the photocopy evidence used against him in this case was from that gathered by Knippenberg, the Dutch diplomat, and Interpol. He appealed the conviction, claiming that he was sentenced without trial. His lawyer also announced that Chantal, Sobhraj's wife in France, was filing a case before the European Court of Human Rights against the French government for refusing to provide him with any assistance. Sobhraj's conviction was confirmed by the Patan Court of Appeals in 2005.

In late 2007 news media reported that Sobhraj's lawyer had appealed to the then French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, for intervention with Nepal. In 2008, Sobhraj announced his engagement to a Nepali woman Nihita Biswas (who later participated in the reality show Bigg Boss). On 7 July 2008, issuing a press release through his fiancée Nihita, he claimed that he was never convicted of murder by any court and asked the media not to refer to him as a serial killer.[22]

It was claimed that Sobhraj married his fiancée on 9 October 2008 in jail during Bada Dashami, a Nepalese festival.[23] The following day, Nepalese jail authorities dismissed the claim of his marriage. They said that Nihita and her family had simply been allowed to conduct a tika ceremony, along with the relatives of hundreds of other prisoners. They further claimed that it was not a wedding but part of the ongoing Dashain festival, when elders put the vermilion mark on the foreheads of those younger than them to signify their blessings.[24]

In July 2010 the Supreme Court of Nepal postponed the verdict of an appeal filed by Sobhraj against a district court's verdict sentencing him to life imprisonment for the murder of American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975. Sobhraj had appealed against the district court's verdict in 2006, calling it unfair and accusing the judges of racism while handing out the sentence.

On 30 July 2010 the Supreme Court upheld the verdict issued by the district court in Kathmandu of a life sentence for the murder of Connie Jo Bronzich and another year, plus a Rs 2,000 fine for entering Nepal illegally. The seizure of all Sobhraj's properties was also ordered by the court. Sobhraj’s “wife” Nihita and “mother-in-law” Shakuntala Thapa, a lawyer, expressed dissatisfaction with the verdict, with Thapa claiming that Sobhraj had been denied justice and that the "judiciary is corrupt."[25] They were charged and sent to judicial custody[26] for contempt of court because of these remarks.

On 18 September 2014 Sobhraj was convicted in Bhaktapur district court of the murder of Canadian tourist Laurent Carrière.[27] In 2018 Sobhraj was in critical condition, and had been operated on multiple times. He has received several open heart surgeries, and was scheduled for more.[28][29] As of December 2020 Sobhraj was still imprisoned.

Sobhraj has been the subject of three non-fiction books, Serpentine (1979) by Thomas Thompson,[30] The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobrhaj (1980) by Richard Neville and Julie Clarke,[31] and the section titled "The Bikini Murders" by Noel Barber in the Reader's Digest collection Great Cases of Interpol (1982). Neville and Clarke's book was the basis for a 1989 made-for-TV movie, Shadow of the Cobra.[32]

The 2015 Bollywood film Main Aur Charles, directed by Prawaal Raman and Cyznoure Network, is reportedly based on Charles Sobhraj's escape from Tihar Jail, New Delhi.[33][34] The film was initially produced by Pooja Bhatt but due to differences midway into the shoot, Pooja left the film.[35]

An eight-part BBC miniseries called The Serpent was broadcast in the UK in January 2021 starring Tahar Rahim and Jenna Coleman.[36]

• Adnan Patrawala Murder Case
• Auto Shankar
• Geeta and Sanjay Chopra kidnapping case
• Joshi-Abhyankar serial murders
• List of serial killers by country
• List of serial killers by number of victims
• Murder of Jessica Lal
• Neeraj Grover Murder Case
• Nirupama Pathak death case
• Nitish Katara murder case
• 2008 Noida double murder case
• Noida serial murders
• Raman Raghav
• Snehal Gaware Murder
• Stoneman

• Neville, Richard; Clarke, Julie (1980). The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj (3rd ed.). Pan Books (Australia). ISBN 0-330-27001-X., reissued as On the Trail of the Serpent. Vintage Books. 2020.
• Thompson, Thomas (1979). Serpentine. Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 0-7867-0749-6.
• Clarke, Julie; Neville, Richard (1989). Shadow of the Cobra. Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0-14-012937-3.

• Charles Sobhraj profile, Biography.com; accessed 1 February 2016
• Sobhraj’s Past Revives via his wife Nihita – Big Boss 5, ekendraonline.com; accessed 1 February 2016
• SC upholds Sobhraj conviction, myrepublica.com; accessed 1 February 2016
• Cop who investigated 1975 murders settles score as lawyer, myrepublica.com; accessed 1 February 2016
• Inspector who foiled Sobhraj, hindustantimes.com; accessed 1 February 2016
• Return of the Serpent, time.com; accessed 1 February 2016
• Mark Gribben, "All about Charles Sobraj", Crime Library; accessed 1 February 2016
• "Asia's most infamous serial killer gets life...", goasia.about.com; accessed 1 February 2016
• Shadow of the Cobra, imdb.com; accessed 1 February 2016
• Madhur Bhandarkar to make Sobhraj film?, timesofindia.indiatimes.com, 11 June 2009