Javed Iqbal Mughal, Lahore, Pakistan.

[Eat Shit And Die]

Background information

Birth name: Javed Iqbal Mughal
Born: 1956
Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
Died: 8 October 2001(2001-10-08) (aged 45)
Cause of death: Hanging; Apparently suicide but autopsy indicated torture
Conviction: Child sex abuse, murder
Sentence: Death.


Killings

Number of victims: 100
Span of killings: unknown–unknown
Country: Pakistan
Date apprehended: December 30, 1999

[Eat Shit And Die]

Javed Iqbal Mughal (1956 in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan - October 8, 2001 in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan) was a Pakistani serial killer who was found guilty of the sexual abuse and murder of 100 children. This is disputed now because 26 of the children he claimed to have killed were found alive after his death. The case stands officially closed but allegedly not well investigated.
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Early life

Javed Iqbal was the sixth child (fourth son) of a businessman. He matriculated at High School. He started his own business in 1978 when he was an intermediate student at the College, Railway Road. His father bought two villas in Shadbagh. Iqbal set up a steel recasting business in one of the houses and lived there for years along with boys

Murders, arrest, and trial

In December 1999, Iqbal sent a letter to police and a local Lahore newspaper confessing to the murders of 100 boys, all aged between six and 16. In the letter, he claimed to have strangled and dismembered the victims - mostly runaways and orphans living on the streets of Lahore - and disposed of their bodies using vats of hydrochloric acid. He then dumped the remains in a local river. In his house, police and reporters found bloodstains on the walls and floor with the chain on which Iqbal claimed to have strangled his victims, photographs of many of his victims in plastic bags. These items were neatly labeled with handwritten pamphlets. Two vats of acids with partially dissolved human remains were also left in the open for police to find, with a note claiming "the bodies in the house have deliberately not been disposed of so that authorities will find them."

Iqbal confessed in his letter that he planned to drown himself in the Ravi River following his crimes but after unsuccessfully dragging the river with nets, police launched what was, at that time, the largest manhunt Pakistan had ever witnessed. Four accomplices, teenage boys who had shared Iqbal's three-bedroom flat, were arrested in Sohawa. Within days, one of them died in police custody, apparently by jumping from a window.

It was a month before Iqbal turned himself in at the offices of the Urdu-language newspaper Daily Jang on the 30^th December, 1999. He was subsequently arrested. He stated that he had surrendered to the newspaper because he feared for his life and was concerned that the police would kill him.

Although his diary contained detailed descriptions of the murders, and despite the handwriting on the placards in his house matching Iqbal's, he claimed in court that he was innocent and that the entire affair was an elaborate hoax to draw attention to the plight of runaway children from poor families. He claimed that his statements to police were made under duress. Over a hundred witnesses testified against Iqbal and he and his accomplices were found guilty.

Iqbal was sentenced to death by hanging, the judge passed sentence saying "You will be strangled to death in front of the parents whose children you killed, Your body will then be cut into 100 pieces and put in acid, the same way you killed the children." However although some parts of Pakistan life are governed by Sharia Law the sentence would be challenged in the High Court.

Death

On the morning of the October 8, 2001, Iqbal and his accomplice Sajid Ahmad were found dead in their cell in the Central Jail Lahore at Kot Lakhpat. They had apparently committed suicide by taking poison according to an official at the jail in the city of Lahore where he was imprisoned although this was investigated by his lawyer, Faisal Najib Chaudhry. Iqbal is considered the serial killer with the most victims in Pakistan's history as an independent nation.