When I first met Charles Sobhraj, it was in Kathmandu District Court in 2003. I was impressed that even after three weeks in the city’s filthy, overcrowded Hanuman Dhoka jail, he wore spotless jeans, a checked shirt, and a light-tan jacket.
Despite his reputation for escaping prisons—which gained him his slithery nickname—the security in the courtroom was lax. So I struck up a conversation with him, with only a young Nepalese policeman sitting between us. Sobhraj’s manner was calm and pleasant, and he was quietly confident that he would win his case and head back to Paris soon. “They have nothing on me,” he told me. “I’ve done the housework.” He asked me for my business card. He was disarmingly suave.
