The man who caught Charles Sobhraj twice and is now Netflix Hero

The story of the French serial killer Charles Sobhraj, described in the drama of the BBC-Netflix The Serpent, is well known.

Now a new Netflix film tells the least known History of an Indian police officer who captured the notorious killer – not once, but twice.

Inspector Zende features the actor of Bollywood, Manoj Bajpayee, in the holder of the policeman while actor Jim Sarbh plays Sobhraj – redesigned like Carl Bhojraj.

The film takes place over three weeks in 1986 while the police and the criminal play a cat and mouse game.

Warning: spoilers below for the film Netflix

It started on March 16 of the same year, Sobhraj escaping from Delhi’s high security Tihar prison, where he was serving a 12 -year prison sentence since 1976 for the murder of a French tourist.

Wrongly saying that it was his birthday, he feeds candy with the drugs to the staff and almost all the prisoners and fled.

A few days later, when he appeared in Mumbai, inspector Madhukar Zende has been called since he had already arrested him in 1971.

The release of the film brought Mr. Zende – which has a cameo in the film as “OG”, or the original inspector Zende – in the big titles in India, decades after having arrested.

I spoke to Mr. Zende and I read his recent Mumbai book, Most Wheding to reconstruct the history of Sobhraj’s arrest.

The 88 -year -old retired officer told the BBC that he had arrested many hardened criminals and members of the Mumbai underworld, but it was the notoriety of “International Sobhraj criminal” which earned him the reputation of “a supercop”.

Born from an Indian father and a Vietnamese mother in Saigon, Sobhraj grew up in France where his mother moved after having married a French soldier.

He was little known when he made the headlines in India for the first time in 1970 for a daring robbery in a jewelry store in Ashok, a five -star hotel in Delhi.

When Inspector Zende captured him a year later in Mumbai, city newspapers described him as “more feathers in the Mumbai police ceiling”.

Sobhraj was given to the Delhi police who manipulated the robbery of jewelry, but in a few days, he escaped by going down a bathroom pipe in a hospital where he had been admitted after complaining about pain in the appendix.

Over the next five years, Sobhraj has become a notorious serial killer and was linked to more than 20 murders across India, Nepal and Thailand, in which the victims were drugged, strangled, beaten or burned.

For his talent for misleading disguises and the ability to escape prison, he was nicknamed “The Serpent” – he later became the title of a successful BBC and Netflix series on The Killer, which was published in 2020.

Another name that stuck was the “bikini killer” for its tendency to target young Western women on the hippie trail in Asia. Interpol published a red corner opinion against him and the police in dozens of countries was looking for him.

His luck was exhausted in the summer of 1976 when Delhi police arrested him for addicted 40 French university students and tried to deprive them in the Indian capital.

A court in India also sentenced Sobhraj for murdering a French tourist in a hotel in Mumbai and was sent to Tihar prison to serve a 12 -year term.

Mr. Zende says he found the news of the escape of Sobhraj de Tihar in 1986 “disturbing”.

“He was known for having used sedatives and had given the police the shift not only to Delhi, but in several other cities in the world. There was no reason for anyone who trusted him,” he said.

Two weeks after Sobhraj’s jailbreak, Mr. Zende was summoned by his boss – “He remembered that I had caught the bikini once” – and had asked to hunt him again.

Netflix’s new film mainly tells the story of Inspector Zende and his team who then goes to Goa to catch him.

The mission, he wrote in the book, was exciting for several reasons.

The top of the list was the possibility of rearraaring Sobhraj. But it was also the first time that he took a flight and would stay in a five -star hotel. The prospect of eating seafood and the famous Alphonso mangoes have added to excitement.

After the days spent combing bars and beaches, Mr. Zende said that the team had been confirmed that Sobhraj was indeed in Goa. They then focused on the O’Coqueiro restaurant in Porvorim – the only place that gave strangers to foreigners the installation to make quick international calls.

“We suspect that he was in Goa to take a boat to the United States where his wife lived and would call him from O’Coqueiro,” he said.

On April 6, the team reached the restaurant early and took a stand. In the evening, there was a hockey match in India-Pakistan live on television and a wedding on the site.

“At 8 p.m., the hockey match and the wedding was in full swing. At around 10:30 p.m., when Sobhraj entered, I recognized him instantly,” wrote Mr. Zende. “The 10th anniversary of not seeing him fall in an instant.”

Sensational arrest made Mr. Zende a celebrity. The morning newspapers praised him with “Zendabad” – a play on words on Zindabad, the word in Ourdou for life.

He was on magazine covers, was congratulated by the greatest actors and singers of Bollywood who asked him for his autograph, the Federal Minister of the Interior came from Delhi to meet him and he received the president’s medal for bravery.

The best recognition, however, came from DE Coqeiro – a Zende tray which costs 2,500 rupees ($ 28; £ 21) and serves six.

Sobhraj, meanwhile, returned to prison where he spent another decade.

Later, he said that his escape was a stratagem to prolong his sentence and avoid extradition to Thailand, where he was wanted for five other murders and was sure to obtain the death penalty.

After his release in 1997, he returned to France where he lived in Paris and gave interviews paid to journalists.

In 2003, he returned to Nepal and was arrested and spent 19 years in prison for the 1975 murders of an American and a Canadian. In 2022, a court released him because of his age and his good behavior and he was expelled in France.

I ask Mr. Zende if he still has an eye on Sobhraj today.

“He has served his sentence. He is now 81 years old. I am no longer concerned about him,” he said.