The Serpent has brought Charles Sobhraj daughter, Usha, into the limelight. It is a new television series on the terrifying killings of Charles Sobhraj; a French serial murderer of Indian and Vietnamese ancestry.
The series, which debuted on BBC One, is now available on Netflix. With the spotlight refocusing on the serial murderer and people becoming more interested in his history another name is gaining traction; Charles Sobhraj daughter, Usha Sutliff.
According to sources, the show’s producers sought Usha, 50, the daughter of Sobhraj and his former wife Chantal Compagnon. However, she declined to assist with the screenplay. It is understandable that someone would not want to dig into their dark past willingly. Moreover, a family was exposed due to the misdeeds of one member.
She is now far distant from her background, working for the US government in a ‘secret’ position concentrating on homeland defense and counter-terrorism.
Usha formerly worked at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research’s Centre for Policing Terrorism, a research tank in New York. She has also worked as a reserve officer for the LAPD for many years.
According to the Daily Mail, Usha was fostered by Leon Harris. He is a stonemason who wedded her mother, Chantal, in 1975. Usha has no desire to visit her biological father, and she would never speak about him.
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About Charles Sobhraj
During the 1970s, a French serial murderer Charles Sobhraj preyed on Western travelers following the hippie path of South Asia.
People called him “the Bikini Killer” because some of his victims wore bikinis, as well as “the Serpent” and the “the Splitting Killer” because of his snake-like skill to elude investigators.
Sobhraj is presently being held captive in Nepal. Sobhraj assassinated at least 20 visitors in Southeast and South Asia. From 1976 to 1997, he was condemned and imprisoned in India. He retired after his release, advertising his notoriety in Paris. In 2003, Sobhraj returned to Nepal, where he was caught, prosecuted, and sentenced to life in prison.
Sobhraj relocated with d’Escogne and kept bouncing back and forth between Paris’ upper society and the criminal underbelly. He began amassing wealth through a succession of robberies and con games.
Sobhraj met Chantal Compagnon, a beautiful Parisian woman from a strict household. Love soon blossomed between the two!
In 1970, Sobhraj and a pregnant Compagnon fled France for Asia to avoid imprisonment. Sobhraj landed in Bombay later that year after journeying through Eastern Europe with bogus passports and robbing travelers they met along the route.
Here Usha, daughter of Charles Sobhraj wife, was born. Meanwhile, Sobhraj returned to his criminal ways, operating a vehicle theft and smuggling business. Sobhraj’s ever-increasing income funded his burgeoning gambling addiction.
About Charles Sobhraj daughter
Usha was born in Mumbai in 1970, when her parents, Sobhraj and Chantal, were already on the run as wanted criminals. Sobhraj had persuaded Chantal to help him steal visitors and falsify travel documents as part of a crime spree.
She took Usha back to France to reside with Chantal’s parents while detained in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1973. Sobhraj, on the other hand, was able to flee and kidnap Usha by harming her grandma. It is available in a sequence in The Serpent where the filmmakers briefly dive into the psychopath’s history. He then attempted to take Usha to Iran, where the cops arrested Charles at a casino.
Charles Sobhraj daughter Usha Sutliff, 50, was born in India and now works for the US government in a ‘secret’ position specializing in counter-terrorism and homeland security.
Given her tragic history, it’s remarkable that she’s also a long-serving warrant officer with the Los Angeles Police Department. It is a career that may have put her at odds with her father had he followed his dream of relocating to the United States. Leon Harris adopted Usha, and her father claims that his daughter has had no contact with Sobhraj since she was a toddler.
How Usha Feels About Her Biological Father?
According to Leon in an exclusive interview, Usha had no desire to visit her biological father, and the last thing she wanted to do was talk about him.
Usha works for MI5 and has a classified job. It’s so private that she hasn’t even informed Leon about it, even though he is her only parent. She is a fearsome lady, similar to her father in appearance and toughness, but it is the only thing Charles and Usha have in common.
According to Leon, Charles Sobhraj daughter Usha, now a parent of one, learned the reality about her birth dad when she was eight years old, but she has never shown an interest in seeing him.
Usha has even shut herself apart from her mother to escape this part of her history. After airing on BBC One on New Year’s Day, the eight-part series on the serial murderer is available for Streaming in the United States from this month. BBC One and Netflix collaborated on the eight-part limited series.
About The Serpent
BBC One and Netflix joined hands to work on a real-life crime series. The web series, The Serpent, is about Charles Sobhraj. The beginning of the series clarifies that a Dutch ambassador, Herman Knippenberg, played by Billy Howle, is researching how two Dutch travelers have no trace since they last appeared in Bangkok during the 70s.
Charles Sobhraj, enacted by Tahar Rahim, is abusing people by drugging, robbing, and killing them along with Ajay Chowdhury, played by Amesh Edireweera, and Marie-Andrée Leclerc, played by Jenna Coleman.
The co-producer of this series, Paul Testar, was in charge of tracking all the relative information. Knippenberg had access to massive data related to the Sobhraj family as well. Moreover, Dominique Renelleau, a captive worker, added important cues to the story. Finally, inputs from Leclerc’s diary aided the process. Julie Clarke and her husband, late Richard Neville, offered vital information through interviews as they had worked on “On the Trail of the Serpent.” Such information also helped create the series with much precision.
The majority of the show is around Sobhraj’s 1975 killing rampage in Bangkok. But the filmmaker includes horrifying sequences with his first wife and children at the conclusion as he dives into the psychopath’s history.
According to Leon, producers approached Chantal and daughter Usha Sobhraj and her step-sister Sandrine, 45, about collaborating on the screenplay, but they denied their requests. In the drama, they also have aliases. The Serpent depicts how Sobhraj and Leclerc preyed on unsuspecting travelers along the South East Asian hippie path.
How Was Charles Sobhraj Apprehended
He was so good at eluding the investigators that he became Interpol’s most sought man, but according to The Independent, cops finally apprehended him in 1976. Sobhraj’s murdering rampage came to a halt when he intended to drug 22 guests of a French touring party during a party in New Delhi. Despite the drugs, several people continued to stay awake and phoned the police to report what had transpired.
Sobhraj’s Thai neighbors, Nadine and Remi Gires put their lives on the line to ensure he was apprehended. Nadine said in an interview that she celebrated Charles’ arrest with a bottle of champagne. She slept with a baseball bat beneath her bed if he attacked her while she was sleeping.
She has no remorse since she did all she could to halt the killings. And she can attest to the fact that it was an excellent lesson. She is now extremely cautious about the persons she encounters. Sobhraj received 12 years in jail for the murder of two visitors.
Where Is Charles Sobhraj Now
After his release from prison in 1997, he became a type of media celebrity after his release from prison in 1997, even charging reporters for meetings.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Sobhraj attempted to sell the license to his life story for millions of euros by embarking on an extensive press tour in Paris.
In an interview, the series’ producer and writer Richard Warlow said that he is continuously attempting to commercialize himself and his tale, and they were confident that they’d never pay him. And, because he’s a habitual liar, everything he had to say to them would have been false.
But Sobhraj’s strange existence in the spotlight ended in 2003 after his arrest in Kathmandu, Nepal, for traveling with a forged passport and the 1975 murders of American tourist Connie Jo Boronzich Canadian tourist Laurent Carrière. Sobhraj received life in jail for his actions, and he is still living and incarcerated in Nepal.
Sobhraj married Nihita Biswas, his lawyer’s daughter, while incarcerated in 2008. At the time, she was 20 years old, and he was 64 years old. His wife was an absolute star in the past. While visiting Sobhraj in prison and functioning as his interpreter, Biswas is said to have fallen in love with him. According to an interview, she feels he is innocent. He’s currently 76 years old and has undergone multiple heart operations while inside.
About Usha’s Biography
According to Usha’s online profile on the website of Lafayette Group, a government consulting firm she joined in 2008, she was a specialist in law enforcement, intel, counter-terrorism, homeland security, and cybersecurity until recently.
She formerly worked at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research’s Center for Police Terrorism, which pioneered the Broken Windows theory of policing. She was seconded full-time to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Criminal Intelligence Bureau and Counter-Terrorism.
The daughter of Charles Sobhraj is a former professional print writer who graduated from Boston University and has participated in the LAPD Reserve Program since 2007. Usha is happily married to Jason Sutliff, a 49-year-old Fire Captain from San Marino, California, located in the suburbs of Los Angeles.
His relatives’ Facebook images reflect a happy, all-American household. But, as per her adopted father, she broke off all communication with her actual mother, now 74, after Sobhraj’s freedom from an Indian prison in 1997.
However, previous months’ social media posts devoted to Chantal show that part-sister Sandrine might have links to their mother.
Even though he nearly choked her to pass in the 1970s after incurring losses at a casino, Chantal continued going to France without anyone to meet her former husband once he was a free man. Chantal emerged as a different person, leading her husband to believe Charles brainwashed her while on the trip.
What happened to Charles Sobhraj daughter
Even though Chantal Compagnon had gone to the United States with Usha Sobhraj to guarantee that her child would never fall into her father’s hands again, she returned to Charles in 1997, while he was living as a free man in Paris, France.
However, it is unknown whether Usha has maintained contact with the convicted felon. After all, she had already made a comfortable life on her own by the time Charles gained his brief freedom. She grew up in the Western world with her stepfather and mom.
Charles Sobhraj daughter Usha, who is in her early 50s, is over twenty years older than her father’s present spouse, Nihita Biswas, so now you can imagine how embarrassing that must be for her.
Furthermore, because she chooses to keep out of the spotlight, the only people who know about her is that she still lives in America. In other words, answers to queries, including if Usha has a close bond, whether she considers France to be her home, and even her future ambitions, are up in the air.
Final thoughts
When you watch The Serpent, you’ll return to the trusting days of driving in the 1970s. Everyone’s performance is flawless, from the protagonists to the supporting characters.
The appearance, feel, and sounds of the 1970s hippie trail have been faithfully reproduced. That brightly colored bus from England to Nepal, with stops in Istanbul, Kabul, Tehran, and Delhi, makes me nostalgic for the days when the globe was a welcome Eden; although one with a snake lurking nearby. The Netflix series that immortalizes Charles’ crime spree is now available to watch.
