A Police Officer from Mumbai who retired from
service now Madhukar Zende caught Charles Sobhraj in Goa. There had been
several gangsters in India who committed ruthless crimes not thinking twice
about murder. However, among them Sobhraj is a class apart. When interviewed
Zende told the media that he has met and talked to many gangsters in his life
but he has never met anyone like Sobhraj for whom murder came naturally and as
long as his task is accomplished he had no empathy at all for his victims,
neither any remorse for what he had done. For him other humans are like any
other object that served his wishes.
Hotchand Bhawnani Gurmukh Sobhraj was born to
an Indian Sindhi father and Vietnamese mother at Saigon in 1944. Because Saigon
was then a French territory Sobhraj got a French Passport later. His parents
were never married and his father denied his paternity to Sobhraj. He was taken in by his mother’s new husband
who was a French Lieutenant, then stationed at Indo China. His name got entered
into church records as Charles Gurmukh Sobhraj in 1959. As it happens in such
families he was neglected compared to his adopted fathers children and he
shuttled between France and Vietnam.
Sobhraj was very proficient in using drugs and
substances to control, rob & murder tourists. He is considered a master at
disguise which earned him the nickname “The Serpent”. He is an expert
conversationalist using, charm, intelligence, and manipulation to disarm his
victims.
As a teenager he used to commit petty crimes and
received his first prison sentence for burglary in 1963. While serving the
sentence he used his personality to manipulate prison officials and also
endeared himself to a wealthy Frenchman who was a prison volunteer. After
coming out of jail he moved in with the Frenchman and shuttled between the high
society of Paris and the criminal underworld.
He started accumulating riches through
burglaries and scams and at that time Sobhraj had a romantic relationship with
Chantal Compagnon of Paris. He proposed marriage to her but on the same day he
was arrested in a stolen vehicle. He was sentenced to 8 months in prison and
Chantal married him after he got released from prison. By 1970 he became a
French citizen through his mother.
They left France in 1970 and travelled through
Europe befriending and robbing tourists along the way and came to Bombay where
Chantal gave birth to a baby girl and named her Usha. Sobhraj ran a car theft
and smuggling racket. His money then went towards his addiction to gambling.
In 1973 Sobhraj was arrested after a robbery
attempt of jewellery at the Ashok Hotel, New Delhi. Sobhraj borrowed money from
his father for his bail and fled to Kabul. In Kabul, the couple robbed hippies
and were caught again. Sobhraj feigned illness, drugged the guard at the
hospital and escaped again. Sobhraj now fled to Iran leaving Chantal and the
baby behind in Afghanistan. Chantal got fed up of their criminal activities and
returned back to France and did not want to see Sobhraj again.
Sobhraj had 10 stolen passports and he spent
the next 2 years on the run with them. He went to many countries in Eastern
Europe in the Middle East. Sobhraj was joined by his half-brother Andre in
Turkey. Together, they committed criminal activities in Turkey and Greece. They
were caught in Athens and Sobhraj managed to escape leaving Andre behind. Andre
served a 16 years jail sentence in Turkey.
Sobhraj financed his lifestyle by posing as a
gem salesman or a drug dealer to defraud the tourists he met in India. He met
Marie Andree Leclerk from Quebec who was a tourist. She was dominated by
Sobhraj and became his ardent follower turning a blind eye to his illegal
activities and flings with other women.
Sobhraj himself created problems for the guys
whom he wanted to befriend and then bought their loyalty by removing the
problems he himself created. He himself had stolen the passports of 2 French
policemen and then recovered their missing passports. Then he gave shelter to a Frenchman who seemed
suffering from dysentery, but it was Sobhraj that poisoned him. So ingratiatyed
himself to the very men he harmed. An Indian guy called Ajay Choudhary then
joined Sobhraj in his crimes.
Sobhraj and Choudhary started their murder
spree in 1975. Most of the victims comprised of those people who were recruited
by Sobhraj to be a part of their crimes and they spent a good amount of time
with Sobhraj & Co. Sobhraj murdered all those who threatened to expose his
crimes by using temazepam and Heroin.
The first victim of his murders was Teresa
Knowlton from Seattle. Her body was found in a tidal pool in the Gulf of Thailand.
The burnt body of the Turkish Jew Vitali Hakim was found burnt near to the
Pattaya Resort where Sobhraj and his entourage stayed. Sobhraj had no problem
in recruiting people as he was full of charm when required. A Dutch student
aged 29 and his fiancé were invited to Thailand by Sobhraj when he met them at
Hongkong. As usual they were poisoned by Sobhraj who nursed them back to health
and made them obedient to his wishes.
Vitali Hakim’s girlfriend came to investigate
her murder and became pally with the Dutch student and his fiancé. Sobhraj
first killed both of them and their burnt and strangled bodies were found in
Dec 1975. Then Hakim’s girlfriend was also finished off by Sobhraj and her body
was found dead wearing a swimsuit.
Sobhraj’s first victim Teresa Knowlton and
Halims girlfriend were both found dead in a swimsuit because of which Sobhraj
named the epithet Bikini killer. In Dec 1975 Andre Marie Leclerc and Sobhraj used
the dead Dutch couples passports and entered Nepal. There they murdered a
Canadian man and an American woman and returned back to Thailand using their
fresh victims passports before their bodies were discovered.
On return from Thailand his 3 French companions
in Thailand found some documents and suspected Sobhraj’s hand in the murder of
their other friends who died, reported the matter to the authorities and fled
to Paris.
Sobhraj next came to Varanasi or Calcutta where
he murdered an Israeli scholar to obtain his passport. Sobhraj used that
passport to travel along with Le Clerc and Choudhary to Singapore and then to
India and returned back to Thailand in March 1976. Sobhraj returned back to
Thailand despite fully knowing that the Thai police were investigating him. He
could fool them easily.
Meanwhile a Dutch diplomat and his wife were
investigating the murder of the Dutch student and his fiancé. He continued
gathering evidence against Sobhraj with the help of Sobhraj’s neighbours and
finally got permission to search Sobhraj’s residence. But Sobhraj had already
fled the country a month before along with Le Clerc and Choudhary. The diplomat
found evidence including passports, syringes and poisons.
The criminal trio fled to Malaysia where
Choudhary was made to steal gems. He was observed delivering the gems to
Sobhraj. After that Choudhary was never seen again nor was his body found.
Sobhraj murdered him before leaving Malaysia and continue his and Le Clerc’s
false identity as gem dealers in Geneva.
In 1976 Interpol issued an arrest warrant
charging him with 4 murders in Thailand.
In India Sobhraj started a forming a new
criminal group with Le Clerc along with Barabar Smith & Mary Ellen Eather
in Bombay where a Frenchman was poisoned during a robbery and died.
In July 1976 Sobhraj and his 3 women gang
tricked a tour group of French PG students into accepting them as tour guides.
Sobhraj drugged them by giving them poison pills which he said were dysentery
medicine. The students started falling unconscious one after the other but 3
students realized what Sobhraj and done and overpowered him and handed him over
to the Police. Sobhraj’s 2 women accomplices other than Le Clerc confessed
during interrogation and Sobhraj was charged with murder. All the 4 were sent
to Tihar jail in New Delhi.
Sobhraj entered Tihar with gems concealed in
his body and he bribed the jail guards and led a life of luxury at Tihar. He
hired and fired his lawyers at will and eventually went on a hunger strike and
made his trial into a spectacle. He was finally sentenced to 12 years in
prison. He led a lifeof luxury in the prison with TV and gourmet food.
Sobhraj’s jail sentence was to end before the
20 year Thai statute of limitation was to expire, so it became certain that he
would be handed over to the Thai authorities. In Thailand he would get executed
for murder. Sobhraj planned to avoid that. In 1986 when he was in his 10th
year in prison he threw a big party to his guards and inmates, drugged them
with sleeping pills and walked out of the prison free. However, Inspector Madhukar Zende apprehended
him in Goa and his prison sentence was extended for 10 years just as he
planned.
In Feb 1997 he was released from prison aged
52years. By that time most warrants, evidence and witnesses against him was
long last. With no country to extradite him to, he was sent back to France. Sobhraj
retired to a comfortable life in Paris. He charged large sums fo money for his
interviews and photos and the rights of a film based on his life was sold for
USD 15 million.
After committing murders in Nepal earlier
Sobhraj should have avoided the country like a plague. However, his
overconfidence in himself and his intelligence made him careless and he arrived
in Kathmandu in 2003 to set up a mineral water business.
In Sep 2003 a journalist published his photo in a newspaper. The Nepalese Police opened a murder case on him which happened in 1975. In August 2004. Sobhraj was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Kathmandu court. Sobhraj appealed on this in the Supreme Court of Nepal and the SC confirmed the sentence by the Kathmandu court in 2010. His lawyer said that his wife Chantal was going to file a case in the European Human Rights Commission against the French government.
In 2010 he married his Indian Nepali
interpreter, the daughter of his lawyer who was just 20 years old and younger
to him by 44 years. In 2014 he was convicted of his another murder in Nepal and
sentenced to 20 years in prison. In 2018 he had many critical surgeries for his
heart condition and finally in Dec 2022 he was released by the SC of Nepal
after serving 19 years of the sentence and he was deported to France.
