Nicknamed "Kukri": Why a businessman in Pakistan was sentenced to be dismembered into 100 pieces

Serial killers are found among representatives of any nation, regardless of skin color, traditions and religion. They operate in Islamic countries, including those where strict Sharia laws are in force. A Sharia court sentenced Pakistani Javed Iqbal Mughal to strangulation and dismemberment into 100 pieces. Some considered the sentence too cruel, but the maniac is responsible for at least a hundred human lives. Most of his victims were children and teenagers.

Most often, serial killers and rapists are people who grew up in dysfunctional families and suffered abuse and humiliation as children. But Javed Iqbal Mughal does not fit this stereotype. He was born in 1961 in the city of Lahore, to a wealthy and respected family. The father of the future criminal owned a pipe factory and a chain of stores, and his mother was raising nine children, including one adopted child.

The children of the Mughal family wanted for nothing. The parents strove to give their offspring a good education and raised them in accordance with the values of Islam. But, as they say, there is always a black sheep in every family. And such an outcast was Javed Mughal. From early childhood, he was a problem child: he fought with other children, offended his brothers and sisters, and was prone to lying and manipulation.

When Javed did not get what he wanted from his parents, he would resort to threatening suicide and thus get his way. According to his brothers, he was interested in films with scenes of violence and weapons, especially bladed ones. Despite this, Javed was quite smart and did well in school. However, he was in bad standing at school due to his arrogant and aggressive behavior. Once, he even talked other teenagers into starting a fire in a school classroom to get revenge on a strict teacher. However, guilt for this incident was never proven, and Javed managed to escape punishment.

Despite his disgusting behavior, Javed was his father's favorite, and his father constantly spoiled him. After school, the boy entered a good college, and his father gave him a metalworking workshop. But Javed did not manage to finish his studies. In the late 70s, the boy was seriously injured during a student rally and spent a long time in the hospital. After recovering, Javed decided not to return to school, but to fully focus on his business.

But Mughal was interested in more than just metalworking and trade. He had an unhealthy sexual attraction to children and teenagers of his own sex. For a long time, he managed to suppress this passion, but in the end it turned out to be stronger than him. Javed was well aware of how strict the law of his country was towards rapists and pedophiles. Especially considering that in Pakistan executions are carried out publicly.

So he decided to protect himself as much as possible and spared no expense. The young pervert did not lie in wait for his victims in the alleys. In 1978, while still studying in college, he opened his own business - a slot machine hall. Gradually, he had a whole network of such establishments where you could not only play games, but also buy sweets, chips and nuts. The prices in Mughal's establishments were ridiculous, and they were always filled with children.

Young video game fans fell into the clutches of a pedophile using a simple but well-established scheme. A crumpled banknote was thrown on the floor of the club and picked up by some young visitor. At that moment, security appeared out of nowhere. The child was accused of theft and immediately taken to the director's office. Javed was already waiting for him there. Under the pretext of a search, he forced the boys to strip naked and committed lewd acts on them. As a result, the tearful and frightened boy left the office with the very banknote that the director generously allowed him to keep.

In addition to corrupting children in his clubs, Mughal also "hunted" on the streets. He met children and teenagers from poor families, presenting them with toys, clothes and sweets. Having gained a child's trust, Mughal conducted "reconnaissance in force" by inviting the boy to a movie. During the movie, Javed carefully assessed whether the child was suitable for his dirty plans. Often, he managed to interest his new acquaintance with money or gifts and voluntarily persuade him to have sexual intercourse.

Javed felt he had impunity: he was arrested several times, but his father's influential connections always helped him escape punishment. His parents were well aware of his inclinations and hoped that he would change by starting a family. He married twice, but both wives left him after learning of his vile secret.

Mughal was so obsessed with perversion that he even turned his marriages into a tool for satisfying his desires. His first wife was a girl whose underage brother was his lover. In addition, he forced his sister to marry another young lover. In this way, he sought to bind his victims to himself as much as possible. Javed had two children - a son and a daughter, but their mothers were very protective of them, not allowing him to approach them.

Over time, Javed got fed up with his "pranks" and wanted more thrills. So he started attacking children and raping them, threatening them with a knife. In 1990, he raped a 9-year-old boy and was caught. But thanks to his father's intervention, he only spent 6 months behind bars. Soon he was again accused of attempted rape, but the case did not even go to court. The issue was decided by the local council of elders, who decided that Mughal should apologize to the child and his parents.

Javed had to move to another area of Lahore. But even there he was dogged by failures. In 1998, he lured two boys, aged nine and eleven, into a car and raped them. After that, Mughal let them go, ordering them to come to one of the city temples in three days. But the children were not afraid and told their parents about what had happened. When they came to the meeting place together with their father, he detained the rapist and handed him over to the police. Nevertheless, the maniac again easily got away with it - the court released him on bail.

In the autumn of the same 1998, Mughal lured two teenagers to his home and attacked them. But they were not timid and brutally beat the pedophile. The injuries were so severe that Javed spent 22 days in a coma and then remained paralyzed for several months. His mother, unable to bear the shock, died of a heart attack. Mughal did not even admit that he himself had caused the death of a loved one. He blamed the children for everything and decided to take revenge on everyone indiscriminately. In his diary, he wrote:

From this moment on, the bloody story of Javed Iqbal Mughal began. He had nothing to lose. His family had turned away, his father had cursed him, and his business had completely failed. The pedophile sold the rest of his property and bought a house in one of the poor areas of Lahore. It was there that he was going to indulge in his vices, no longer limiting himself in anything.

After the injury, the maniac's hands did not obey him well, and his legs became much less agile. Then Javed decided to get assistants. They were 17-year-old Sajid, 13-year-old Sabir and 9-year-old Nadeem. These were boys whom he had once corrupted and managed to subjugate. The teenagers did not study and did not even think about work - they agreed to carry out any instructions of their "boss" for a small fee.

On New Year's Eve 1999, Mughal sent a letter to the police, where he confessed to killing hundreds of children aged 6 to 16. According to him, he preyed on orphans, homeless people and teenagers who came to Lahore from villages in search of work. The maniac lured victims to his home, promising them well-paid work. There he gave them juice with sleeping pills and then raped the unconscious children.

After that, he killed the children in various ways. Some he strangled with a chain, others he cut their throats with. Sometimes he used an oxygen mask through which he supplied poisonous cyanide fumes. Mughal dismembered the victims' bodies with a traditional Nepalese cleaver, the kukri, which is why journalists later nicknamed him Javed "Kukri". Among the boys killed, there was only one female victim. Mughal dealt with a girl who was pregnant by his henchman, at the request of his assistant himself.

The maniac poured acid over the chopped-up corpses and, having dissolved them, poured them down the drain. A strong cadaverous smell came from the toilets in his house. Of the hundreds of victims whose murders the maniac described in his diary, the police found only parts of three children's bodies. Mughal was proud of his ingenuity and even boasted that "disposal" of one corpse cost him no more than $2.40.

Surprisingly, having received the maniac's detailed letter, the police showed no interest in him. The guards visited Mughal at home, and after a short conversation decided that he was simply crazy. During the conversation with the police, the maniac became furious and even threatened the guards with a gun. But they did not take any action, and only hurried to leave the strange psycho's home.

After this, Javed sent a copy of his confession letter to a local newspaper and disappeared. Journalists insisted on conducting a search of Mughal's house. This time, no one had any doubts about the reality of the crimes. In the home of the serial killer and pedophile, they found a chain with traces of blood, two barrels with partially dissolved remains, personal belongings of the victims and the very same kukri cleaver with which he cut up the bodies like a butcher.

The main evidence was found in the killer's diaries, which contained numerous photographs of the victims. After that, a large-scale hunt for Mughal began. Trying to cover his tracks, he sent a letter to the Lahore police, in which he wrote that he had decided to commit suicide and drown himself. Law enforcement and rescue workers combed the Ravi River, but no body was found. The search for Pakistan's bloodiest criminal reached an unprecedented scale - thousands of police officers and soldiers took part in it.

But they failed to catch the maniac until he decided to surrender himself. On December 30, 1999, Javed Mughal came to the Daily Jang newspaper office and surrendered to journalists. He explained his actions by saying that the police would have certainly killed him upon arrest. The criminal was handed over to the police. Soon his underage assistants were arrested as well.

The trial of Javed Iqbal became a sensation. More than 100 witnesses testified against him. The maniac himself suddenly changed his testimony, claiming that he had incriminated himself under pressure from the police. He said that he had staged the murders to draw attention to the problems of homeless children, and that the remains that had been found allegedly belonged to animals. But no one took these words seriously – the evidence was too eloquent.

The sentence was handed down according to the Sharia legal concept of Qisas, or "an eye for an eye." The killer was to be killed the same way he killed his victims: strangled with a chain, dismembered into 100 pieces, according to the number of victims, and then dissolved in acid and poured down the drain. Additionally, Mughal was sentenced to 700 years in prison for desecrating dead bodies. The maniac's senior henchman, Sajid Ahmad, was also sentenced to death. The investigation proved his complicity in 98 out of 100 murders.

The other two underage assistants received 273 and 63 years in prison, one could say life sentences. The maniac's sentence, that is, the part about dismemberment, seemed too harsh to religious organizations. The case was returned to the Sharia court for review.

But there was no need for an appeal - Javed Mughal and his right-hand man Sajid Ahmad were found dead on October 9, 2001, in their cells, separated by a wall. The official version is suicide by poisoning. But many believe they were killed to avoid further investigation. Mughal's family was offered the body for burial, but no one came to claim it.

The story of Javed Iqbal Mughal is not only shocking in its brutality, but also raises questions about how society can allow such a thing to happen. Why did no one notice that hundreds of children were missing? How could a serial killer operate with impunity for so long? These questions have inspired documentaries such as The Man Who Killed 100 Boys (UK) and Untold Stories of Pakistani Serial Killers (Pakistan). In 2022, Pakistan even made a film called Javed Iqbal: The Untold Story of A Serial Killer, but its release was restricted due to censorship.

Iqbal left behind not only pain and fear, but also a manuscript called The Future Is Death: Confessions of Dead Children. It is a collection of 100 deathbed interviews with his victims that he never published. After his death, the manuscript was declared lost, but fragments of it still haunt the minds of those who study his case.

What do you think about this story? How do you think such tragedies can be prevented in the future? Share your thoughts in the comments!