Kolsum Akbari and the Mazandaran Serial Murder Case

How the case emerged

The case became public after authorities in Mazandaran investigated the suspicious death of an elderly man in 2023. Reporting from the later court proceedings said that relatives began comparing his circumstances with an earlier alleged poisoning episode linked to the same woman. What initially appeared to be one suspicious death then expanded into a review of deaths connected to Akbari over many years.

IranWire reported from the 2025 proceedings that prosecutors charged Akbari with eleven counts of premeditated murder and one count of attempted murder. Court reporting said that she had made admissions during questioning. Because admissions, indictments and final judgments are legally different things, this page keeps each stage separate.

The prosecution theory

Prosecutors alleged that Akbari entered relationships or marriages with older men and administered combinations of medicines or other substances. According to the prosecution, some deaths initially appeared natural because the men were elderly or had medical conditions. Prosecutors further alleged that financial gain — including access to money or property — was a motive.

Those allegations were not merely repeated as fact before trial. They became the subject of a criminal prosecution involving numerous relatives and claimants. IranWire reported more than forty-five plaintiffs during the 2025 hearings, while later Iranian judicial reporting described a large group of heirs whose individual decisions could affect the qisas portion of the case.

Why the number of victims requires caution

Online retellings of this case have circulated several totals. The most defensible reference point for this dossier is the formal court record described in reliable reporting: an indictment alleging eleven intentional murders and one attempted murder. The 2026 Tasnim analysis, citing the judiciary spokesperson, said the trial court issued ten separate qisas judgments for intentional murder and a ten-year prison term for attempted murder.

That does not mean every internet claim of twelve, thirteen or more killings is established. Tasnim itself warned that media and social-media accounts about victim numbers and motives do not necessarily match what a court has adjudicated. The archive therefore avoids adding unverified deaths to make the case appear larger.

The 2025 trial-level judgment

After several hearings, reporting in September 2025 said that the Mazandaran court issued ten qisas judgments associated with intentional-murder findings. One victim's heirs were reported to have chosen a different legal path involving blood money rather than qisas. Akbari also received a ten-year prison term in connection with an attempted-murder count.

These were serious judicial findings, but they were not the end of the legal process. The distinction matters especially in a death-penalty case, where describing a first-instance ruling as final would materially misstate the defendant's legal status.

Supreme Court review remains pending

On August 8, 2026, Tasnim published an analysis of the case that explicitly said the trial judgment had not yet become final. The report said the case was proceeding to Iran's Supreme Court for review of objections and that it was inaccurate to describe the qisas judgments as definitive before that process concluded.

Tasnim further stated that the final outcome would depend not only on Supreme Court review but also, for individual qisas claims, on legally relevant decisions by victims' heirs. No reliable final Supreme Court ruling located during this September 2026 review superseded that status.

Presumption and terminology

Because a trial court has entered findings but final review remains open, this archive classifies the case as Unsolved / Partial rather than placing it among completed adjudications. The page does not call every reported death a proved murder, does not present every prosecution theory as independently established fact, and does not predict whether any qisas judgment will ultimately be carried out.

Timeline

Current status

The case remains Unsolved / Partial for archive purposes because its final judicial status is incomplete. Trial-level findings exist, but the Supreme Court review described by Iranian judicial reporting remained pending in August 2026. This classification should be revisited if a final ruling is published.

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