The Kathmandu Central Jail has sent French serial killer Charles Sobhraj to the Immigration Department on Friday.

The administration that had planned to release him on Thursday had postponed it for Friday saying that some official procedures were not complete to set him free from the prison.

The ‘bikini killer’ Sobhraj was jailed for the murder of an American woman, Connie Jo Boronzich, 29, and her Canadian friend Laurent Carrière, 26, in 1975.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court had directed the prison management authority to free the notorious killer, and deport him to his country, within 15 days through immigration.

A division bench of justices Sapana Pradhan Malla and Til Prasad Shrestha who had asked the government to arrange for his repatriation to France, concluded that the 78-year-old should be freed as he has already completed 95 percent of his jail term.

Sobhraj’s lawyers had long been demanding the court’s intervention for clemency. In different petitions they had demanded a waiver of his jail sentence, citing provisions of Clause 12 (1) of the Senior Citizens Act 2063.

Lawyers of the septuagenarian, on the ground of his age and fragile health, had filed a habeas corpus petition saying that he was qualified for remission of the sentence. Clause 12 (1) of the Senior Citizen Act states that elderly prisoners who have completed the age of 70 years can get a waiver of sentence not exceeding 50 percent, and the waiver is up to 75 percent for those who have completed 75 years of age. Sobhraj had also petitioned the President of Nepal for his release from jail.

Arrested on September 19, 2003, Sobhraj’s lifetime imprisonment would have ended on September 18 next year. The French citizen with Vietnamese and Indian parentage committed a string of murders across Asia in the 1970s.

Sobhraj, who has been implicated in more than 20 killings, served 21 years in prison in India for poisoning a French tourist and killing an Israeli national.

Senior Advocates Lokbhakta Rana and Rambandhu Sharma and advocates Shakuntala Thapa and Nihita Biswas had also pleaded on behalf of Sobhraj.