INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
DECEMBER 24Journalist Joseph Nathan went for food at a Kathmandu casino one night in 2003 but ended up with the scoop
of his life: French serial killer Charles Sobhraj was there playing baccarat.
Charles Sobhraj deported to France
Sobhraj to be freed today
His resulting article in The Himalayan Times led to the arrest of Sobhraj and his incarceration - which ended
on Friday - for just two of the smooth-talking killer's many murders across Asia in the 1970s.
"He was like an old man.You
wouldn't give him a second look
He looked harmless...It was sheer luck that I recognised him
I think it was karma," Nathan told AFP in an interview.Ending up in Thailand in the mid-1970s after a youth of travel and crime, Sobhraj was
linked to more than 20 murders, many of them young foreigners on the Asian hippie trail.Justice eventually caught up with him in India in
1976 when he was arrested and imprisoned in Delhi's Tihar jail, where he escaped after drugging prison guards but was recaptured.Upon
release, he moved to France but travelled to Nepal in 2003, apparently believing that authorities there had nothing on him, Nathan
said.However, he was still wanted for murdering two backpackers in 1975 and it was his bad luck that the Indian journalist happened to
recognise him, even without his trademark beret
"The casino manager was a friend of mine and we watched him together on the security camera," said Nathan, editorial adviser at The
Himalayan Times and one of its founders."I posted a photographer around the clock at his hotel, which was a cheap hotel.Every night he was
playing baccarat at the casino."In the meantime Nathan dug around and managed to secure from the hotel manager a copy of Sobhraj's
passport.He had checked in under an alias."On the 12th or 13th day I followed him into the loo and asked him if he was Charles Sobhraj,"
Nathan told AFP."He said: 'Is that a Bollywood actor?' Then I knew Ihad him
The same night I wrote the story..
and the following day he was picked up at the casino (by police)."Sobhraj, now 78 and with heart problems, according to his lawyer, was
released from prison on Friday to be deported back to France.Nathan said he thinks the decision is fair
"It was time he was released as he has already served his sentence in accordance with Nepal's law," he said.However, Nathan is unhappy with
the hit Netflix/BBC series "The Serpent" about Sobhraj's life, not least for changing the name of his newspaper
"It was the greatest scoop," he said
"But Netflix changed the name of our newspaper in its mini-series.We contemplated suing them."A version of this article appears in the print
on December 24, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
This article first appeared/also appeared in https://thehimalayantimes.com