French serial murderer Charles Gurumukh Sobhraj Hotchand Bhawnani was born on April 6, 1944. He preyed on Western visitors visiting South Asia in the 1970s on the hippie path. He was referred to as “the Bikini Killer,” “the Splitting Killer,” and “the Serpent” because of “his snake-like abilities to elude identification by authorities,” as well as the clothing worn by a number of his victims.
At least 20 tourists are believed to have been murdered by Sobhraj across South and Southeast Asia, including 14 in Thailand. In India, he was found guilty and imprisoned from 1976 to 1997.
He retired after being freed and continued to publicize his notoriety in Paris. When Sobhraj returned to Nepal in 2003, he was detained, tried, and sentenced to life in prison. After serving 19 years of his sentence in jail, the Supreme Court of Nepal authorized his release on December 21, 2022, due to his advanced age. He was liberated and sent to France on December 23.
He was “handsome, charismatic, and completely without scruples,” and he utilized his good looks and shrewdness to promote his criminal career and become famous. He also delighted in his notoriety. Four biographies, three documentaries, the Indian movie Main Aur Charles, and the eight-part BBC/Netflix drama series The Serpent were all written about Sobhraj.
Charles Sobhraj parents: Sobhraj Hatchard Bavani, Tran Loang Phun
His father was an Indian tailor who didn’t want anything to do with his son, and his mother was a young Vietnamese woman who worked in bars and shops.
The BBC claims that this rejection made Sobhraj resentful and vindictive and may have influenced the formation of the vicious man he would become. In his diary, he reportedly wrote, “I will make you regret that you neglected your father’s responsibility.”
His parents were never wed. When Sobhraj was initially stateless, his mother’s new husband—a French Army lieutenant stationed in French Indochina—took him in.
In favor of the couple’s later children, he felt overlooked there. Sobhraj kept traveling back and forth between France and Southeast Asia with the family.
