A Case of Charles Sobhraj: How Many Times Can We Retell the Same Killer?

Are creative geniuses in Bollywood clinging to a story as if it’s a lifeboat? It certainly seems so to be the case when that story is Charles Sobhraj, the Bikini Killer, whose crimes have been told, retold, and reimagined to the point of cultural exhaustion.

The elusive conman, charmer, and convicted serial killer has slithered his way into pop culture in recent years first as the main character in the Netflix showThe Seprent, this time through not one, but three recent cinematic interpretations in Bollywood. It begs the question: are we creatively bankrupt, or simply seduced by the serpent?

Sidhant Gupta as Charles Sobhraj in Black Warrant IMDb

While Ryan Murphy in the Hollywood sharpens his craft with every new installment of the Monster series, each more nuanced and culturally resonant than the last with murder cases richly popular in pop culture, Indian storytellers appear content with recycling the same narrative skeleton through different lenses. One could argue this is an exercise in perspective; a Rashomon-esque experiment. But let’s call it what it often is: a symptom of creative inertia masquerading as depth.

The problem is not the subject matter per se. Sobhraj’s life — straddling the sordid, the seductive, and the spectacular — is undeniably curiosity inducing. But when the industry fixates on a single figure, repackaging his crimes in glossy, noir-drenched formats, it starts to look less like storytelling and more like sensationalism. Worse still, it dulls the ethical edge that such narratives ought to carry.

Why are we so obsessed with the man dubbed "The Serpent" and "The Bikini Killer"? Perhaps because he represents a paradox we cannot resolve — a killer with the charisma of a cult leader, a sociopath who moved through society's elite circles with unnerving ease. But dramatising Sobhraj, again and again, does not unravel that paradox; it unfortunately seems like it glorifies it and reduces horror into aesthetic.

From Randeep Hooda’s Sobhraj in Main Aur Charles (2015), to Tahar Rahim’s cobra-like intensity in the BBC’s The Serpent (2021), to Jim Sarbh’s suave "Carl Bhojraj" in Netflix’s latest September release this month Inspector Zende (2025), and even Sidhant Gupta’s seductive cameo in Black Warrant, the industry has proven that it cannot or one may suppose will not look away.

Jim Sarbh as Charles Sobhraj in the new Netflix film starring Manoj Bajpayee Inspector ZendeIMDb

The more times we retell the story of Sobhraj, the less horrifying and more palatable it becomes. The man who murdered backpackers and conned several security agencies across Asian and is now portrayed as a sharply dressed anti-hero with a penchant for drama and deception which calls for he’s being mythologised.

These portrayals suggest a creative industry afraid of moving on. What should be a cautionary tale about evil and manipulation has turned into a franchise — one where style triumphs over substance, and real-life horror is rewritten as a clever game of cat-and-mouse.

Have we become complicit in the very manipulation that made Sobhraj so dangerous to begin with? If so, then we’re not just telling his story, we’re extending it.

Charles Sobhraj, now a free man living in France after serving time in Nepal, remains tight-lipped about his past. He’s never confessed. He doesn’t need to. Pop culture has done the confessing for him, turning his crimes into a marketable myth, time and time again. Are there no other "dangerous" criminals and their crimes to look into to inspire true crime stories?

In the end, the obsession says less about him and more about us: our fatigue with moral clarity, our preference for grey over black and white, and our failure to recognize that sometimes, there’s no deeper mystery — only monstrousness.

And yet, the serpent slithers on.