New Delhi: Businessman Moninder Singh Pandher and his domestic help Surinder Koli, who were given the death sentence on Friday for raping, killing and cannibalising Rimpa Haldar - the first among the 19 cases registered against them - may well figure in the infamous list of serial killers who gained notoriety for the methods they employed.
Of all the famous killers Harold Frederick "Fred" Shipman, a British general practitioner, was perhaps the most prolific known serial killer in history, with 236 murders being ascribed to him by a government inquiry.
About 80 per cent of his victims were women. His youngest victim was Peter Lewis, a 41-year-old man. The jury convicted Shipman in January 2000 of killing 15 patients by lethal injections of diamorphine. Shipman died four year later after he hanged himself in his cell at Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire.
There was also the case of Javed Iqbal, a Pakistani serial killer who was found guilty of sexual abuse and the murder of 100 children.
In December 1999, Iqbal sent a letter to the 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, the police found bloodstains on the walls and floor, the chain with which Iqbal claimed to have strangled his victims, and photographs of many of his victims in plastic bags.
These items were neatly labelled with handwritten pamphlets. Two vats of acids with partially dissolved human remains were also left in the open for the police to find, with a note claiming "the bodies in the house have deliberately not been disposed of so that authorities will find them".
Like Shipman, he too reportedly hung himself from a prison cell.
Chinese serial killer, Yang Zhiya - who confessed to committing 65 murders between 1999 and 2003 - was sentenced to death and executed. He was dubbed by the media the "Monster Killer".
But by far the case of Ahmad Suradji, a serial killer in Indonesia, was the most chilling. Suradji, a cattle-breeder born in 1951, was executed in July 2008.
He reportedly killed 42 girls and women over a period of 11 years. His victims ranged in age from 11 to 30, and were strangled with a cable after being buried up to their waists in the ground as part of a ritual.
Suradji was arrested in May 1997 after the bodies were discovered near his home on the outskirts of Medan, the capital of north Sumatra.
He buried his victims in a sugarcane plantation near his home, with heads of the victims facing his house, which he believed would give him extra power.
He told the police he had a dream in 1988 in which his father's ghost told him to kill 70 women and drink their saliva, so that he could become a mystic healer. As a sorcerer, women came to him for spiritual advice for making themselves more beautiful or richer.
His three wives - all sisters - were also arrested for assisting in the murders and helping to hide the bodies. One of his wives, Tumini, was tried as his accomplice.
The trial began in December 1997, with a 363-page charge against him, and although Suradji maintained his innocence, he was found guilty April 1998 by a three-judge panel. He was sentenced to death by firing squad.
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