[1/2] Police officers escort Charles Sobhraj, a French national known as 'the Serpent', accused of killing over 20 young Western backpackers across Asia, to the Department of Immigration after he was released from prison, following an order of Nepal's Supreme Court, in Kathmandu, Nepal December 23, 2022.
REUTERS/Chandra Bahadur AleKATHMANDU, Dec 23 (Reuters) - Charles Sobhraj, a convicted killer who police say is responsible for a string of murders in the 1970s and 1980s, was released from a Nepal prison on Friday after nearly two decades behind bars.
Sobhraj was driven out of Central Jail in Kathmandu by a cavalcade of police cars a little after midday, Ishwari Prasad Pandey, a jailor at the Central Jail, told Reuters.
Sobhraj escaped from India's Tihar jail in 1986 after drugging prison guards with cookies and cakes laced with sleeping pills.
"Jail authorities will hand him over to the department of immigration today," Sobhraj's lawyer, Chintan told Reuters earlier on Friday.