'Pakistan's worst serial killer' Javed Iqbal murdered 100 boys and dissolved them in acid
- E.
- Nov 12, 2021
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 13, 2021
To the families of the 100 little boys and teens he had raped and murdered, Javed Iqbal’s execution wouldn’t bring their sons back - but the thought of seeing him being hanged, chopped up and dissolved in acid must have offered some sort of closure.
Iqbal, who was born in the Pakistan capital city of Lahore in 1956, had already spent decades grooming young runaways, orphans and beggars, coaxing them in to his depraved world with promises of riches and giving them special treatment in his video arcades and luxurious homes.
But in 1999 he admitted to murdering 100 boys, writing to a newspaper and the police force to reveal to his heinous - and previously unnoticed - actions.
He confessed that he had lured boys, mostly beggars and street children aged six to 16, to his home where he sexually assaulted them, strangled them to death, dismembered them and then as a final callous goodbye, disposed of their remains in a vat of acid.
Once they were completely dissolved, he would pour the liquid in to the sewer or river.
At his trial a judge gave him 100 death sentences and ordered that he be executed with the same chain he used to strangle his victims and that his body be cut into 100 pieces and dissolved in acid.
He said: "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."
To this day it remains one of the most brutal death sentences ever given - but Iqbal took his own life before he faced justice for his frenzied six month killing spree.
Although he later denied his crimes, Iqbal had kept detailed records of his victims, including their names, ages, and photographs, and children’s clothing was found at his home, as well as other sickening proof that he wasn’t lying or just a weirdo courting attention.
But before he could face justice for what he had done, both Iqbal and one of his young accomplices were found hanged in their prison cells.
Despite evidence there was foul play involved, their deaths were recorded as suicides.
So how did this happen? It seems unfathomable that one hundred boys could go missing in a short space of time and no one raise the alarm - but looking back at Iqbal’s life, it becomes clear that he was a master manipulator and cunning groomer.
He even wed the older sister of one of his teenage victims as a ruse to continue his sleazy and illegal antics in private.
Local newspaper The Dawn painted an abhorrent portrait of a man who had spent nearly all of his adult life orchestrating situations where he could groom and abuse younger boys.
In an October 2001 article, they claimed that he had “spent most of his life keeping a brigade of teenaged boys around him. People having a first-hand experience of meeting Iqbal term him a “boy hunter” who would go to any extent to satiate his lust for sodomy.”
The newspaper also claimed that he had used many methods to lure younger boys, but his “most effective” method was to make pen-friends through children’s magazines.
The Dawn reported: “After getting photos of his pen-friends, he would short list ‘attractive’ boys to maintain friendship with them. He would spend thousands of rupees on sending them gifts like perfumes, tickets, coins etc.”
Coming from a wealthy family made it incredibly easy for him to persuade impoverished youngsters to perform depraved acts. In 1978, aged 22, his father bought a villa in the outskirts of Lahore where Iqbal lived and worked a steel recasting business.
Away from the prying eyes, he invited many of his young victims to move in with him, and had them accompany him as he went about his daily business. When his family questioned his behaviour he reacted furiously, refusing to let them question his lifestyle or interact with his harem of teenage boys.
However, while his ashamed loved ones turned a blind eye, there were numerous attempts made by police to arrest him for sexually abusing boys although charges never stuck.
As well as his pederastic desires, Iqbal’s family were at their wits’ end over his refusal to be married off.
After avoiding it for years, in 1983 he surprised them by announcing he had found a bride - he failed to mention she was the older sister of one of his live-in child lovers.
He pulled a similar stunt by making his sister marry one of his young victims so that he wouldn’t be taken away from him.
Iqbal would stop at nothing to keep living his hedonistic homosexual life, and despite his reputation as being a paedophile resulting in him being thrashed by sickened locals and serving six months in prison after being found guilty of sodomy.
The Dawn claims that as years passed he became even more elaborate in his methods of securing youngsters to groom, use and abuse.
The paper writes: “He opened a video games shop — the first of its kind in Shadbagh — and would offer tokens to boys at reduced rates and in some cases free of cost. He would throw a 100 rupee note on the floor and watch the boy who would pick it up. Then he would announce that his money had been stolen and he had to search everybody. The ‘thief’ would be caught and taken to an adjacent room where he would be sodomised. At times the money would be given back to the boy as a “gesture of goodwill.”
“When people stopped their children from visiting the shop, Iqbal set up a fish aquarium and later a gym, again to attract boys.
“He also set up an air-conditioned school (Sunny Side School) but it failed as nobody was willing to send children. He also opened a fair-price shop where items of daily use were sold at a price lower than the market value. That too lasted for a few weeks.”
It was also claimed that he befriended important police officers and went as far as to publish a magazine praising them for all of their hard work and brave exploits.
When his father died in 1993, Iqbal received a hefty share of Rs 3.5 million (£350,000) from his estate. It was a no brainer that most of it would be spent on buying sex from children, but he also constructed a large house with a pond in the basement and a swimming pool in the backyard. Neighbours remember that he loved moving around in style and was often seen driving around in brand new cars with half a dozen boys crammed in to the backseat.
Iqbal bragged to his brothers that he had prepared a chemical concoction which had the power to dissolve a person to just a skeleton in minutes. They thought nothing of it... until he confessed that he was an even more dangerous sexual predator than they had ever dared to imagine.
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