Charles Sobhraj, the 78-year-old serial killer known as "The Serpent," was released from prison in Nepal on Thursday.

The French citizen was driven out of Kathmandu's Central Jail in a heavily guarded police motorcade and taken to the Department of Immigration to receive travel documents. He has 15 days to leave Nepal.

He is due to return to France on Friday.

"Nepal's government wants to send him back as soon as possible. Sobhraj also wants that," lawyer Gopal Shiwakoti Chintan told reporters on Thursday.

"So I arranged for him the ticket of Qatar (Airways) at 6 (p.m.). The French embassy is bringing him his travel document."

Why was 'The Serpent' released?

In 2003, a Nepali court sentenced Sobhraj to life in prison — 20 years — for the 1975 murder of an American tourist Connie Jo Bronzich. He was later also convicted of killing her Canadian friend. Sobhraj denies both counts.

But Nepal's Supreme Court ordered his early release on Wednesday due to poor health, old age and good behavior, having already served the requisite three-quarters of his sentence.

"He has a heart issue," his lawyer said. The serial killer previously underwent heart surgery in 2017.

Sobhraj is suspected of murdering more than 20 Western backpackers on the "hippie trail" in Asia during the 1970s and 1980s. These killings were dramatized in the Netflix/BBC series "The Serpent."

Although he admitted to some of the murders, the true number of victims is not known.

Sobhraj previously spent two decades in New Delhi's maximum-security Tihar prison on suspicion of theft. He was deported without charge to France in 1997 before resurfacing in Kathmandu.

zc/wd (Reuters, AP, AFP, dpa)