Serial killers and true crime

He once wowed India with a TV show where he rolled out French cuisine with a flourish. Now celebrity chef Alain Andre is seeking to make a more piquant dish: a film on his fellow Frenchman Charles Sobhraj, who is currently serving life for murder in the dank and dismal Central Jail of Kathmandu.

Andre, who spends half the year in India and half in Europe, mostly Paris, has a production company in New Delhi — Pash Production.

The sexagenarian’s USP is that along with his film partner in Paris, François Enginger, he is the only one to hold a contract to make a film on Sobhraj, a right that Sobhraj has been fiercely protecting from Bollywood film makers who have also showed interest in his life and crimes.

Andre, who has never met Sobhraj, says he came to know about him though Enginger while they were shooting a film in Thailand. François asked a travel agency in Paris to get his visa and the woman who was assisting him turned out to be Sobhraj’s ex-wife Chantal.

“I have all the rights for a movie on his life story,” she told Enginger. “Could you help us?”

At that time, Sobhraj was finishing his stint in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail. When he was released and deported to France in 1997, Andre says Sobhraj and Enginger became friends with the latter helping him obtain an apartment and giving him money.

During that time, Sobhraj, depicted as a serial killer by the media, showed a different side to him.

“Charles met a Chinese woman and had a baby with her,” says Andre. “The baby was sick and Charles, with François, were at the doctors’ every day. They became good friends and François said to me: ‘This man cannot be a killer, he is so gentle’.”

Then Sobhraj disappeared from Paris in 2003 only to surface in Kathmandu in a blaze of media glare with Nepal police arresting him and then slapping him with the murder of an American tourist in 1975.

Despite a long battle in three courts, Nepal’s Supreme Court finally judged him guilty last year and upheld the 20-year prison sentence awarded by the lower courts.

“We think he has fallen into a trap,” Andre says.

With Enginger currently in Morocco, Andre is now scouting for a “serious” Indian co-producer who will be willing to put down 50 percent of the budget needed for shooting the film. Andre has planned the feature film, to be made in Hindi and English, to be shot in France, Greece and India.

With Sobhraj’s obsession with controlling the script, how did Andre persuade him to make the film?

“Charles knows that Isabelle Coutant Peyre (his lawyer in Paris) will protect his rights and make sure that the movie respects his point of view,” Andre says. “And I personally would not want to make any movie without respecting Charles’ life and honour.

“Nobody can say Charles is a killer; there is no proof. Only Nepal has sentenced him as a killer, but the so-called proofs are fake and the United Nations International Committee for Human Rights in Geneva itself has condemned Nepal in 2010.”

What about the rumours that Shah Rukh Khan was ready to play Sobhraj in the film?

Andre nixes that.

“I met an Indian producer who told me he was a partner of SRK and so the rumour went around that way,” he says. “But the discussions with that Indian producer are over.”

(Sudeshna Sarkar can be contacted at sudeshna.s@ians.in)

The entire article here.

WTF?

Sorry. I try to not scream curses here but really? There is no proof that he is a killer?

I hate Charles Sobhraj. Why?

I hate people who destroy others. I especially hate those that that destroy others and then gain and wallow in that destruction.

From Crime library:

Crime Does Pay

Imagine that you could earn nearly a million dollars for every year you spent in prison with the understanding that you would likely get out in the prime of your life. Would you take that deal?

More specifically, suppose you could live like royalty behind bars, in almost total control, with guests free to come and go as they pleased, cellphones, TV, gourmet food and fine wine to eat and drink. Would that make the deal worth 20 years of your life?

Charles Sobhraj in France

For serial murderer Charles Sobhraj, the idea of retiring to Paris and making $15 million for a movie deal based on his life made spending more than two decades in a notoriously corrupt Indian prison worthwhile. Sobhraj, a Vietnamese-Indian by birth and French national by adoption, turned a sentence for homicide in India into almost a life of leisure while at the same time evading prosecution for a dozen murders in jurisdictions that should have brought a death sentence.

He was a con man, jewel thief, drug dealer and murderer, but one who lived a life of adventure and intrigue that made him a media celebrity. He amassed enough money to bribe his captors who provided him with amenities to make life in an Indian prison more bearable. For most of his incarceration he had access to typewriters, a television, refrigerator and a large library. That’s in addition to the drugs and food that he used to entertain and control his fellow inmates in the prison that was supposed to be the harshest in India.

Even more vexing  was the idea that, at 52 years old, Sobhraj could walk out of Delhi’s Tihar prison, sign a $15 million deal for his life story and then charge the media upwards of $5,000 an interview once he returned to Paris.

Not bad for a man who was convicted of one homicide and accused of committing at least 10 more. Some authorities believe Sobhraj killed more than 20 unsuspecting European and American tourists and pilgrims who journeyed to the Far East and the subcontinent. Some came east in search of drugs and others came in search of spiritual growth. Instead, they found Charles Sobhraj and his gang of killers.

This article is all about how a serial killer can profit. The leaches and blood suckers that help him disgust me.

I can only guess that this so called chef has lost whatever little flair he had. He needs fast cash and is willing to sell his soul for it! Guess he was never much of a chef!