Tahar Rahim previously played the titular French serial killer in the BBC series The Serpent.
Charles Sobhraj, the notorious French-Vietnamese serial killer known as “The Serpent” is the topic of a new Channel 4 docuseries, which is available to watch now.
Titled The Real Serpent: Investigating a Serial Killer, the documentary sees Sobhraj face interrogations by two former Met Police detectives about murders he was linked to but never tried for, with Sobhraj strongly denying that he murdered anyone.
Meanwhile, a forensic psychologist conducts “hours of interviews with the serial killer to make an assessment about whether he is a psychopath and still presents a danger to the public”.
The new series comes three years after BBC drama The Serpent, which explored Sobhraj’s crimes and starred Tahar Rahim (The Looming Tower) in the titular role.
So, who is the real Charles Sobhraj, when was he captured and where is he now? Read on for everything you need to know.
Who is Charles Sobhraj?
Born 1944, Charles Sobhraj is a French serial killer of Vietnamese and Indian origin; he’s otherwise known as “The Serpent,” or else “The Bikini Killer,” so nicknamed due to the attire he dressed some of his victims in.
He was the chief suspect in at least a dozen murders of Western travellers that took place in South Asia in the 1970s, and was for a time Interpol’s most wanted man before his capture in 1976.
As the BBC stated in its description for true crime drama The Serpent: “Posing as a gem dealer, Sobhraj and his girlfriend Marie-Andrée Leclerc travelled across Thailand, Nepal and India in 1975 and 1976, carrying out a spree of crimes on the Asian ‘Hippie Trail’ and becoming the chief suspects in a series of murders of young Western travellers.”
Sobhraj allegedly hated hippies (otherwise referred to as “longhairs” by characters in The Serpent). He was also a thief and fraudster, travelling with stolen passports, and often conned his victims prior to their murders.
When was Charles Sobhraj captured and jailed?
Charles Sobhraj was eventually captured in July 1976 in New Delhi, after an attempt to drug a group of French students went wrong, and he was overpowered by three of the students.
He served his sentence in India from 1976 to 1997, before returning to France. However, during a trip to Nepal in 2003 he was arrested again, and given a life sentence for two murders committed in 1975.
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Where is Charles Sobhraj today?
Sobraj was released from a high security jail in Kathmandu back in December 2022 after a court ruling ordered his release on the grounds that he had served 75 per cent of his sentence and his health was ailing.
His release from prison was accompanied by an order to leave the country within 15 days, leading to his deportation to France later in December.
During the filming of the new documentary, Sobrahj was reportedly seen in London.
Channel 4 said of the docuseries: “[Sobhraj] agreed to be filmed for six months and have his account of the murders he is linked to challenged by former detectives and a leading forensic psychologist, in order to try to get to the truth.
“Sobhraj has been convicted of two killings but admitted to 10 murders in 1977, only to later withdraw the confessions. He is suspected of many more murders but has never been tried for the majority of them, leaving the families of the victims with no closure or accountability.”
Monster Films, the series’s production company, said: “We first made contact with Charles Sobhraj in 2016 when he was in prison in Nepal. Eight years in the making, this series provides an unparalleled insight into the life and crimes of the man the world knows as The Serpent,”
The Real Serpent airs on Channel 4 for three nights, from Tuesday, 19th March 19 at 9pm. Looking for something else to watch? Check out more of our Documentaries coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what’s on tonight.
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