MUMBAI: Director Maneesh F Singh today announced a web series for an international OTT platform titled “The Bikini Killer Meets The Bikini Cop”, even as Charles Sobhraj a killer – and the inspiration behind the web series – who is said to have killed more than 20 western backpackers, mostly women on the “hippie trail” through Asia in the 1970s and 1980s, returned to France on Saturday.
Sobhraj spent nearly two decades behind bars in Nepal and before that an equal time in New Delhi’s Tihar jail.
Singh said the 78-year-old killer’s life and modus operandi always fascinated him as a film maker and this project was in the making for a long time.
“As Sobhraj returned to his motherland, I decided to announce the project today and actor Rayya Labib will play the “Bikini Cop” in the fictional web series, inspired by Sobhraj, who goes undercover on the “hippie trail”.
The film is set in the 1970s in Goa and will depict the Goa of the Hippie Times, Singh said.
Known as the “bikini killer” in Thailand, and “The Serpent” for his evasion of police, on Wednesday, Sobhraj is a French national who was born to an Indian father and Vietnamese mother.
Sobhraj, 78, landed at Paris’ main international airport shortly after 7 a.m. and was escorted off the plane by police for identity checks.
“He is well, he is a free man,” Sobhraj’s lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre told news agency Reuters. Asked what his next steps would be, she said: “He will file a legal complaint against Nepal because the whole case against him was fabricated.”
Sobhraj was held in a high-security prison in Nepal since 2003, when he was arrested on charges of murdering American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975.