Reports say that Raees Khudaidad, the most notorious mafia boss in Afghanistan’s history, was hung to death at Pul-e-Charkhi prison of Kabul. Following the verdict of Kabul Appellate Court, he was executed for being charged with hundreds of heinous crimes including murders, kidnappings and armed robberies.

Khudaidad was arrested last year in September during a special operation conducted by NDS forces. Hearing the news of his arrest, the Kabul residents had asked the government to sentence him to death.

Afghan citizens exulted over the exaction of dangerous Mafia leader and urged the government to put an end to culture of impunity.

In Afghanistan, a country of 30 million people where war has dominated the past four decades, death is a common feature of life. Lurid, tabloid-worthy serial homicide, however, is a relative rarity. It should be noted that women are not impeccable creature and they are also involved in murderous acts. How human beings turn to fierce animal?

It is believed that man shows a natural tendency towards good deeds. He feels a fervid desire and a strong sense of spiritual thirst for moral values. Man hears the call of his conscience in his early period of life. His inner goodness whets his interest to nurture ethical mores and religious decorum. He feels a bona fide peace after doing a favor to his next-door neighbor or forcing a smile on his parents’ lips. In short, his pure soul is filled with devotion and altruism towards mankind.

Moreover, he feels a profound sense of aversion to unsavory acts. For instance, the cruel will be hated for his/her malicious practices, megalomania and egotism. Although, a despotic regime will be able to rule on individuals’ body with the point of a spur but will never occupy the hearts and minds of a nation. Even the cruel hates to suffer from injustice and the thieves are honest among themselves. Hence, these characters originate in one’s nature.

Man also feels a puissant desire for beauty. He succumbs to the charm and attraction of an image, to the splendor of a mien, to the charisma of a great personality, to the allure of nature, etc. The delicacy of rose petals, the sweet perfume of a flower, the purity of dew, the morning breeze and the green nature of spring will fill one with ineffable bliss. Hence, man will yield to the beauty and magnetism of his surroundings. Thus, man is born innocent and innocuous.

However, the same man, who shows natural tendency to religious values, moral norms, beauty – be it inner or outer – and humanity, gradually succumbs to worldly temptations, materialism and carnal desires. His lust for property puts his soul in chains and he will be subjugated to his physical wants. His humanity and dignity will be on the verge of erosion. He would change to a fierce animal who sacrifices his fellows to gain his self-interests. He will seek to satisfy his physical desires at the cost of raping an innocent girl or murdering numerous people. The more he sheds blood and tarnishes one’s reputation the thirstier he gets. In other words, his voracious appetite and strong thirst for harming people will never be quenched.

As a result, a report says that Shirin Gul, one of Afghanistan’s most notorious serial killers, lives in a dank prison cell in Jalalabad - where most of her fellow inmates were convicted of adultery or theft. She is in the 12th year of a 20-year prison sentence for a killing spree that claimed the lives of 27 men.

Shirin Gul is said to have confessed that the murders were her lover’s idea, though she admits that she had consented to his killing her husband. She knew that her lover, Rahmatullah, poisoned his victims by slipping toxins into the tea and kebabs that she served them. And it is true that she frequently heard the sound of shovels in her courtyard, when graves were being dug.

The report adds, “In an interview at her prison quarters in Jalalabad, Shirin Gul, who is in her 40s but does not know her exact age, came across as erratic. She openly admitted to having mental health problems, making it difficult to separate truth from fiction in her narratives. She laughed uncontrollably one moment and appeared on the verge of tears the next. She cursed Rahmatullah, with whom she was convicted of the murders, calling him “a womanizer, a pedophile and a gambler,” and almost in the same breath said that he was the “most beautiful man she had ever known.””

It is said that when Shirin Gul confessed to murder in 2004, she told investigators that she had lured her victims to her home with the promise of sex. There, she said, Rahmatullah, her son and several other men helped her poison and strangle the victims. Their bodies were buried in the courtyards of two homes the family kept, one in Kabul and the other in Jalalabad. The dead men’s cars were stripped of license plates and sold along the border with Pakistan and in a Taliban-controlled area of Khost Province.

The report further says that At the Kabul home, nine bodies were unearthed from the dirt courtyard; the home in Jalalabad yielded 18 more victims.

Six people, including Shirin Gul, her son, Samiullah, and Rahmatullah, were charged with 27 counts of murder in the case, convicted and sentenced to death. Investigators told reporters at the time that Shirin Gul and most of her accomplices had confessed to the crimes.

The five others were executed. But Shirin Gul’s life was spared by a decree from Hamid Karzai, then the president of Afghanistan. Her crimes were reduced to 27 counts of kidnapping and one count of adultery. Her death sentence was changed to a 20-year term — considered life imprisonment in the Afghan system.