Charles Sobhraj : The Story Of A Serial Killer
Charles Sobhraj was born on born 6 April 1944 as Hatchand Bhaonani Gurumukh Charles Sobhraj to Vietnamese shop girl Tran Loan Phung, and Indian Sindhi businessman Sobhraj Hatchand Bhaonani, who was based in Saigon. 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. 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.
In 1973, Sobhraj was arrested and imprisoned after an unsuccessful armed robbery attempt on a jewellery store at Hotel Ashoka. Sobhraj was able to escape, with Chantal's help, due to faking illness, but was re-captured shortly thereafter. Sobhraj borrowed money for bail from his father, and soon after fled to Kabul. There, the couple begun to rob tourists 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.
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 Instanbul. 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.
Sobhraj committed his first known murder on 1975 along his crime partner Ajay Chowdhury. The first victim was a young woman from Seattle.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.
After their third murder, Sobhraj and Leclerc entered Nepal using the deceased pair's passports where they Laurent Carrière, 26 (from Canada), and Connie Bronzich, 29 (from the USA); 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.
After that he moved to Kolkata(then Calcutta) where he murdered Israeli scholar Avoni Jacob simply to obtain Jacob's passport. Sobhraj used that passport to travel. first to Singapore, then to India, and, in March 1976, returning to Bangkok, despite knowing that the authorities there sought him. 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. A source later claimed to have sighted Chowdhury in West Germany, but the claim appeared unsubstantiated. The search for Chowdhury continues.
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 Mumbai (Then 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 Dehli, Sobhraj, joined by his three-woman criminal clan, tricked a tour group of French PG 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 more quickly than Sobhraj had anticipated, the students began to fall unconscious. Three of the students realized 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.
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 freely talked about his murders with journalists, while never actually admitting to them, and pretended that his actions were in retaliation against "Western imperialism" in Asia.
When Sobhraj's sentence was to end, the twenty-year Thai arrest warrant against him would still have been valid, thereby affecting 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'Coquero Restaurant in Goa; his prison term was prolonged 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.
On 17 September 2003, Sobhraj was seen in a street of Kathmandu by a journalist. The journalist quickly reported this to the Nepalese authorities, who arrested him two days later in the casino of the Yak and Yeti hotel. Sobhraj's motives for returning to Nepal remain unknown. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Kathmandu district court on 20 August 2004 for the murders of Bronzich and Carrière in 1975. Most of the photocopy evidence used against him in this case was from that gathered by Knippenberg, the Dutch diplomat, and Interpol. He appealed against 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 goverment for refusing to provide him with any assistance. Sobhraj's conviction was confirmed by the Patan Court of appeals in 2005.
Sobhraj has committed total 12+ murders, robs and thugs throughout his life. In late 2007, news media reported that Sobhraj's lawyer had appealed to the then French President, (then)Nicolas Sarkozy, for intervention with Nepal.
It was claimed that Sobhraj married his fiancée on 9 October 2008 in jail on Bada Dasami, a Nepalese festival. On the following day, Nepalese jail authorities dismissed the claim of his marriage. They said that Nihita and her family had 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 vermillion mark on the foreheads of those younger to them to signify their blessings.
In July 2010, the Supreme court of Nepal postponed the verdict on 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." They were charged and sent to judicial custody 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.
In 2018, Sobhraj was in critical condition , and had been operated on multiple times. He has received several open heart surgeries, and is scheduled for more.
Learn About Charles Sobhraj with book:
Serpentine: The True Story of a Serial Killer's Reign of Terror from Europe to South Asia
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