What makes Sobhraj a glamourous criminal

KILLING TIME: Nepal SC ruled that Sobhraj will stay in jail and postposed a decision on his appeal.

        

J & K | Chhattisgarh | Delhi | MP |
Mizoram | Rajasthan

Featured Blog

Rajdeep Sardesai

26/11: Terror comes precariously close

Featured Slideshows

New Delhi: Charles Sobhraj one of the world's most notorious serial killer celebrities, accused of murdering more than a dozen people. Also known as the ‘bikini killer’ and ‘the serpent’, Sobhraj is back in the news after the Nepal Supreme Court ordered on Wednesday that he remain in a Nepal jail.

The Supreme Court said that first another case – related to his fake passport – had to be settled simultaneously. Sobhraj was found guilty of the murder of an American backpacker in 1975 and sentenced to life in prison in 2004 by the Kathmandu district court.

However, there is another facet to ‘the serpent’. His dashing personal style has led to him to signing a $15 million book deal and another book, The Life And Crimes Of Charles Sobhraj, is already an international bestseller.

The question that was being asked on CNN-IBN's Face The Nation was: Has the media glamourised the criminal, Charles Sobhraj?

To try and answer the question, on the panel of experts were DG Bureau for Police Research and Development, Kiran Bedi; senior journalist Madhu Trehan; and retired ACP Mumbai Police, Madhukar Zende - the man responsible for Sobhraj's capture in Goa in 1986 after he fled from Delhi's Tihar's jail.

Is Media Glamourising Criminals?

It is not only the media which is glamourising criminals. The public, too, wants to know about the criminal and that is why so many books are being written about him and why he has signed a book deal worth millions of dollars.

Kiran Bedi said that there was a normal tendency for people to know about crimes, the modus operandi, motive and sensationalism of a crime, but it was unusual to want to know about a criminal.

"I think that Sobhraj has drawn more than the attention needed as a person and as a name, rather than the criminal act. This has led to a glamourisation which has further led him to commit more crime. I think he became glamour-hungry over a period of time and this starvation led him to commit more crimes," she said.

She stated that he was a great psychological study because even when he could be safely tucked away in France after he was deported there, he came back to Nepal knowing that there could be cases pending there against him.

"I think that the glamourisation has led him to seek more publicity and that has worked against him," she stated.

Sobhraj: A Deadly Relic of Swinging '60s, Roaring '70s?

Charles Sobhraj was not a typical criminal low-life. He was educated, belonged to the middle class and traveled a lot, mostly with backpackers and around beaches. It seems that his brutal hippie image has added to the appeal that he has.