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Charles Sobhraj, 78, suspected of murdering at least 20 young men and women, is also suffering from poor health after nearly two decades in prison.

The charming killer and his associates preyed on mostly Western backpackers on the hippie trail in India and Thailand in the 1970s and 1980s.

Victims were drugged, robbed and murdered, their bodies dumped and some were burned.

Yesterday, French citizen Sobhraj was driven out of Central Jail in Kathmandu in a heavily guarded police convoy.

He was taken to the department of immigration so his French travel documents can be renewed.

Sobhraj’s release was ordered by Nepal’s supreme court on the grounds “poor health, good behaviour and having already served most of his sentence.”

Judges were told the killer, whose life of crime was made into the BBC drama The Serpent, has been diagnosed with heart disease.

Under Nepalese law, he was eligible for release as he had served at least three-quarters of his sentence.

The order also stipulates that he has to leave the country within 15 days.

Sobhraj’s lawyer Gopal Siwakoti Chitan said the request for travel documents must be made by the immigration department to the French embassy in Nepal.

But that could take some time and the government offices will be closed over the Christmas break.  

It is possible Sobhraj could be taken back into custody if he is still in the country after 15 days.

The killer had been serving two concurrent life sentences for the murders of US tourist Connie Bronzich, 29, and her companion Laurent Carriere, 26, a Canadian.

Life sentences in Nepal last for 20 years and Sobhraj had been in jail since 2004 when he was convicted of Ms Bronzich’s murder.  He was convicted of killing Mr Carriere in 2014.

The two friends were backpacking in Nepal when they fell into the clutches of the Serpent in December 1975.  Their badly burned bodies were found dumped in a field in Kathmandu.

Prior to the two murder convictions, Sobhraj spent two decades in jail in India for poisoning a busload of French tourists.

He briefly managed to escape from prison by drugging the prison guards claiming it was a ploy to get his sentence increased to avoid extradition to Thailand where he was wanted for five more murders.

Sobhraj was freed from jail in India in 1997 and he went to live in France before returning to Asia.

A sharp-eyed reporter spotted him in a Kathmandu casino in 2004 and he was arrested for the murder of Ms Bronzich.

Sobhraj, born in Saigon to an Indian father and a Vietnamese mother, has been known by various nicknames.

He was dubbed the Bikini killer after his first victims were found drowned while wearing flowery bikinis.

Sobhraj also became known as the Charles Manson of the East due to his mesmerizing charm and fondness for quoting philosophers.

But he is best known as The Serpent, the title of last year’s hit BBC drama.

Sobhraj has never shown any remorse.  “I have already taken from the past what is best for me, what helps me live in the present and prepare for the future,” he told the authors of his life story.

“If I play back a murder, it will be to see what I have learned from the method. I won’t even notice the body.”

On the trail of the Serpent by Richard Neville and Julie Clarke is published by Penguin Books.

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