Charles ‘The Serpent’ Sobhraj is a free man after 20 years in jail for committing crimes fit for the plot of a suspense movie, many of which have been made on him and according to him, more are in the pipeline.
Sobhraj, a convicted killer who police believe murdered more than 20 western backpackers on the "hippie trail" through Asia in the 1970s and 1980s, arrived in France on Saturday after nearly two decades behind bars in Nepal.
In an interview with The Indian Express conducted back in 2016, Sobhraj detailed his plans after release, prison time in Nepal, his India connection and his meeting with Masood Azhar. Intelligence sources told IE later that his claims were “highly exaggerated.”
Sobhraj said he made several trips to Pakistan between 2000 and 2003 and met terrorist Masood Azhar.
Detailing the Indian Airlines Flight 814 hijacking in 1999, which resulted in the release of Azhar, Sobhraj said then external affairs minister Jaswant Singh was in direct contact with him.
“I contacted people in the Harkat ul Ansar, Masood’s party then. They, of course, refused to release the passengers but I succeeded in getting an undertaking from them that for 11 days, they would not harm the passengers, but after that, they would start executing. I called Jaswant Singh, told him that in my opinion, no passenger would be harmed for 11 days, so India had 11 days to negotiate,” he is quoted as saying in the report. He said as the plane was in Kandahar, India had no choice but to release Masood to save the passengers.
Sobhraj said he had offered a second solution to the government, to give an official undertaking that Masood will be released in six months, as he tries to negotiate with the terrorist's party on the side. “But finally, they chose the option to release Masood.”
In the interview, he also slammed the corruption in Nepal. “Simply put, the conditions in Nepali jails are primitive, awful. For the poor Nepali inmates, it’s a question of survival… life or death. Many sleep on the ground under the sky,” Sobhraj said of his incarceration in the country.
Now back in France, Sobhraj hopes to spend time with his daughter, get his book published, work on some films and documentaries and keep healthy. Sobhraj also said he wanted to visit India to meet his friends in Pune.