This documentary attempts to grill Charles Sobhraj – whose crimes were fictionalised in BBC drama The Serpent – but he’s as maddeningly evasive as a politician. Luckily, its research segments are highly compelling
If you missed the numerous books, articles and documentaries about him, and the fictionalised version seen in the BBC drama The Serpent in 2021: Charles Sobhraj was convicted of killing two people, but is thought to have killed many more during a spree in the 1970s. He befriended naive tourists who were travelling on the “hippy trail” in south Asia, before drugging them and stealing their passports and money.
Sobhraj admits the drugging and robbing; that he would often then kill his victims is something he now denies, although he did confess it when interviewed by Richard Neville for a biography (co-authored with Julie Clarke) that became a worldwide bestseller in 1979. Sobhraj has never been tried in Thailand, where many of his alleged killings took place, but has served time for murder in India and Nepal.
The Real Serpent: Investigating a Serial Killer aired on Channel 4 and is available online
