LAHORE, Feb 22: A division bench of the Federal Shariat Court on Thursday began proceedings in appeals against the conviction of two co-accused of self-confessed serial killer Javed Iqbal.

The bench, headed by Chief Justice Haziqul Khairi and Justice Muhammad Zafar Yaseen, would hear the appeals of Muhammad Nadeem, 13, and Muhammad Sabir, 14, who were awarded 200-year sentence and 63-year penalty, respectively, by the trial court on March 16, 2000 on charges of abetting 100 children’s murder.

The trial court had handed down an unprecedented sentence to Javed Iqbal that he should be hanged publicly and his body chopped off into 100 pieces and corroded in a way he did with the bodies of his victims.

Javed, 35, and his co-accused Sajid, a teenager, were later found dead in mysterious circumstances in a prison lock-up and their death was declared a suicide by the jail authorities.

Human rights activist Asma Jehangir appeared for Nadeem while Muhammad Rafiq Chaudhry represented Sabir before the FSC and they both blamed the police for implicating the appellants in the offence.

The counsel said the prosecution was carried away by the media trial and in order to satisfy the public it devised fabricated evidence at the investigation stage.

The court viewed that Sabir had retracted his confessional statement at the trial level and both accused despite being juvenile were not tried under the Juvenile Justice System which had come into force by then.

The court asked the prosecution to satisfy it on the said questions on next hearing on Friday (today) when Asma Jehangir will also plead Nadeem’s case.