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Charles Sobhraj is an internationally wanted fraudster known for a series of burglaries and crimes against tourists and backpackers, traveling along the hippie trail in the 1970s and 1980s. His tactics involved befriending strangers, intoxicating them with food and drinks, and then robbing them of their valuables or killing them.
Sobhraj had a charm that he used to manipulate people for several decades. Even after his arrest in 1976, he maintained a lavish lifestyle in prison by bribing guards. He escaped Tihar Jail in 1986 by organizing a fake birthday party and distributing sweets laced with sleeping pills to the guards.
The story of Charles Sobhraj's escape from the Tihar Jail is documented in Netflix's thriller series Black Warrant. The seven-episode miniseries is based on the book Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer by Sunil Gupta and Sunetra Choudhury. The book is based on Gupta's experiences as a jailer in Tihar Jail. The series premiered on January 10, 2025, on Netflix.
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What is the story of Charles Sobhraj?
Charles Sobhraj was born on April 6, 1944, in Saigon, Vietnam, then under French colonial rule. He had a Vietnamese mother and an Indian Sindhi father, gaining French citizenship at birth. Sobhraj's father abandoned the family, and his mother later married a Frenchman, which led to further abandonment when she had children with her new partner.
From his early teenage years, Sobhraj began engaging in petty crimes, frequently ending up in juvenile detention centers. As per a Crime and Investigation article, while imprisoned at Poissy, he met a wealthy man named Fliex d'Escogne.
He assisted Sobhraj in moving to Paris and building a connection to its high-class society. As reported by CNBC on January 10, 2025, while staying in Paris, he met a young woman named Chantal Compagnon, and the duo soon began traveling across Europe and South Asia.
During this time, Sobhraj carried on committing a series of frauds by fooling travelers moving along the Hippie trail. They eventually arrived in Bombay, where Compagnon gave birth to their daughter. Despite having a family, Sobhraj kept on eloping into numerous illicit relationships and continued committing fraud.
As reported by India Times on May 28, 2015, Sobhraj later traveled through Pakistan and Afghanistan, stealing passports and committing various crimes, including the murder of a taxi driver. He then moved to Bangkok and opened a curio shop, where he used to defraud and steal from his customers.
To maintain his lavish lifestyle, Sobhraj escalated his criminal activities by posing as a gem merchant and engaging in the drug business. During an attempted jewelry shop robbery near The Ashoka Hotel in Delhi, he was arrested but soon fled to Kapul, abandoning his wife and daughter.
As reported by CNBC TV, Charles Sobhraj was fluent in multiple languages, which he used to defraud backpackers traveling along the Hippie Trail during the mid-1970s. He would often build close relationships with them and invite them to parties, where he would mix drugs in their drinks. Sobhraj would then steal their belongings and, in many cases, strangle or drown them.
In 1975, Charles Sobhraj returned to India and met a Canadian tourist named Marie-Andrée Leclerc. He soon became involved in a relationship with her, and she began accompanying him on his crimes. He was also helped by an Indian man named Ajay Chowdhury, who assisted in disposing of the bodies.
Their first victim became a young American woman named Teresa Knowlton, whose body, dressed in a bikini, was retrieved from the Gulf of Ireland. As per the CNBC TV article, Sobhraj then met two Dutch tourists, Henk Bintaja and Cornelia Hemker, while they were in Thailand and invited them to Hong Kong.
The couple was drugged and eventually strangled to death after their passports were stolen. Chowdhury and Sobhraj were also responsible for the murder of another woman named Charmayne Carrou. Her body was found drowned in a similar swimsuit, earning Sobhraj the infamous name "The Bikini Killer."
After traveling to Nepal, Sobhraj and Marie-Andrée Leclerc were responsible for the murder of two tourists, Laurent Carriere and Connie Jo Bronzich. As per a CNBC TV article, they later flew to Thailand, where they posed as gem merchants while continuing to commit their crimes.
How was Charles Sobhraj arrested, and how did he flee from the Tihar Jail?
As per CNBC TV, in 1976, when Sobhraj returned to New Delhi, India. Joined by three other women, they embarked on a mission to defraud a group of post-graduate students from France. Sobhraj drugged the students, but three of them managed to escape and informed the police.
Charles Sobhraj, along with two Western women named Mary Ellen Eather and Barbara Smith, was responsible for the murder of a Frenchman named Jean-Luc Solomon. After Sobhraj's arrest, all three were charged with the murder. However, both Eather and Smith committed suicide in prison just before their impending trial.
Sobhraj was sentenced to 12 years in prison and sent to the Tihar jail. Before entering, he managed to take two precious gems inside his body. With the wealth attained, he bribed the police guards and lived in relative luxury behind bars.
Even while staying in Tihar jail, he managed to attain money by providing interviews to foreign journalists and selling the rights to his life story. As per a CNBC TV article, in March 1986, after spending ten years in prison, he planned his great escape.
Sobhraj faked his birthday and threw a big party, inviting all the guards and prison staff. He drugged their food and sweets with sleeping pills, leaving them to sleep soundly after the party. He then escaped from the 271-acre Tihar Jail and reportedly flew to Thailand.
He was eventually tracked down by the Bombay police at a restaurant in Goa, where he received ten more years in prison. As reported by India Times, in February 1997, Charles Sobhraj was released from prison and made his way to France.
As per the CNBC TV article, Charles Sobhraj returned to Nepal in 2003, while he was still wanted in the country. He was arrested from a casino in Kathmandu, where he was charged with the murder of Laurent Carriere and Connie Jo Bronzich. As per News 18 India, Sobhraj had to undergo critical open heart surgery in 2018.
According to a Kathmandu News article published on December 21, 2022, the Supreme Court of Nepal granted him bail due to his deteriorating health. He was given 15 days to leave the country, and on December 23, 2022, he was released from prison. Charles Sobhraj was eventually transferred to France, preventing him from visiting Nepal for a minimum of 10 years.
To know more about Charles Sobhraj's escape from the Tihar Jail, watch Black Warrant on Netflix.
