The Chilling Tale of Pakistan’s Prolific Serial Killer
Peering into the Depths of Horror Inflicted Upon Vulnerable Children
In early December 1999, a local newspaper and police in Lahore, the second largest city in Pakistan, received a disturbing letter. The person who wrote the letter claimed to have murdered 100 boys who were orphans and runaways between the ages of 6 and 16.
The writer confessed to luring the boys from the streets of Lahore to his home, violating and strangling them to death. He then dismembered the bodies of the boys and dumped them into vats of hydrochloric and sulfuric acid to get rid of evidence. The remaining parts of the bodies that did not dissolve were discarded in a nearby river.
The letter included directions to the killer’s home, where authorities would find more evidence. The killer concluded the letter by saying he would soon drown himself in the Ravi River.
When the police got to the home along Ravi Road, in an area considered the slums of the city, they found the walls and the floor of the house covered in blood. There were also photographs of young boys and teenagers throughout the home, as well as note cards with detailed information about the boys, such as their names, ages, physical descriptions, and the exact dates of their deaths.
In addition, a chain with which the killer strangled the victims to death was found. Officers then discovered two large drums with partially decomposed remains of three boys immersed in acid. The killer apparently didn’t dispose of the victims’ body parts so authorities would find them. Other items retrieved from the house included clothing and shoes, which the distraught parents of the boys had to sort through.
Four accomplices, all teenage boys who shared a three-bedroom home with the killer, were immediately arrested. Within days, one of them died in police custody. An autopsy suggested that police force was used, but authorities denied any involvement, saying the boy jumped from a window. But the killer was nowhere to be found.
Police searched the Ravi River, where the killer claimed he was going to drown himself, but came up empty-handed. Assuming the killer was alive, the biggest manhunt in Pakistan’s history ensued to track him down before he could kill others.
The police continued to be unsuccessful. On December 30th, 1999, nearly a month after the arrest of the accomplices, the killer surrendered. Instead of going to the police, he went to the Daily Jang, the local newspaper, and brought with him a 32-page journal that contained detailed accounts and photographs of his murders of the boys. When asked why he didn’t surrender to the police, he stated he feared for his life and was concerned that the police would kill him.
Authorities were called, and they arrested him, but the killer reportedly expressed no remorse for his actions. He simply said, “I am Javed Iqbal, killer of 100 children. I hate this world. I am not ashamed of my actions, and I am ready to die. I have no regrets. I killed 100 children.”
Iqbal was born in 1956 in Lahore, the sixth of eight children and the fourth son of a wealthy businessman. According to his brother, Javed was spoiled as a child and was very difficult to handle. He was aggressive and used to kill animals for fun when he was a boy.
Despite this behavior, he was always at the top of his class. In 1978, Javed attended Government Islamia College in Lahore and lived in a villa his father had bought for him. His father helped him set up a business with an engineering factory after he left college.
Javed apparently employed many young boys as child labor, as is common in Pakistan. This is when his brother suspected Javed became attracted to minors. His parents apparently knew about his preference for young boys but hoped he could still have a normal life. They persuaded him to get married, but Javed rejected this. He eventually agreed, but on the condition that he could choose his wife, against the country’s tradition of arranged marriages. It was later revealed that he chose the elder sister of one of his victims as his bride.
Javed’s fascination with young boys grew throughout the next few years. Multiple complaints were filed against him, accusing him of sexual assault and sodomizing children. As his father was a well-respected and powerful businessman in Lahore, many people suspected his father used his influence to keep his favorite son out of jail.
But in 1991, Javed was arrested for violating two young boys, and it was then that his family truly discovered his perverse tendencies. At the time, he was married for a decade and had a daughter. The shame the arrest brought to his family led to them breaking ties with Javed. His wife also left him.
A few years passed, and then in 1993, his father passed away. Javed, who was in his late 30s at the time, inherited more than 3 million rupees. He used that money to purchase a mansion and many cars. This mansion included a pool, and he invited young boys to the pool and took videos of them swimming.
Javed threw many parties at the mansion, and his guests were mostly boys who were poor. He apparently enticed them with food and shelter. Javed also used his inheritance to fund businesses that fueled his sexual perversion. These businesses appealed to young boys and teenagers whom he could prey upon.
The first of these businesses was a video game arcade, the first of its kind in Lahore, and it was popular among kids. Javed offered young boys discounted games or free tokens. He sometimes dropped money on the floor on purpose to see if any boys picked it up. He said the money was stolen, and once the culprit was found, he would take the boy into a back room for punishment, which included molestation. Sometimes he let the boys go and even let them keep the money, but other times he took them to his mansion, which was close to the arcade, and the boys would never be heard from again.
Local parents soon forbade their children from visiting the arcade. When it closed down, Javed started other businesses with the same goal of luring young boys. They included an aquarium, a gym, a general store, and even a school. However, as soon as parents caught wind that Javed was the owner, they prohibited their children from going.
This did not hinder Javed one bit. He also met boys through pen pal programs and magazines for children and began correspondence with teenagers. He convinced them to send pictures of themselves and send gifts to the ones he thought were attractive. He even arranged to meet them, and soon he had another set of victims.
In September 1998, Javed was robbed and badly beaten. He sustained a head injury so severe that he was unconscious in the hospital for 22 days. Upon release, he was arrested and charged with sodomy. One of his employees, Arbab, filed a complaint with the police alleging that Javed sexually assaulted him. He was granted bail, but when he returned home, he found that his mansion, cars, and businesses were sold to pay for his medical expenses.
Broke and homeless, Javed rented a house in Ghaziabad, the slums of Lahore. He started violating boys again, but this time he murdered them after he wandered the streets of Lahore to find the boys. There were thousands of runaways from remote villages in the city, looking for work. The miners would do anything for money and food. Most of the miners who roamed the streets at the time were beggars and orphans. In many cases, nobody even noticed that these boys went missing.
But for others who came from poor families, their parents looked for their missing children on their own. They did not seek help from the police because the authorities did not have a good track record. Lodging a complaint at the time could have included beatings of the complainants themselves, especially if they came from these types of families. Parents of the missing boys later revealed that they did try to file reports, but the police ignored them.
Javed took advantage of this. He knew that the authorities would take a considerable amount of time before they took any case seriously. Upon his arrest at the Daily Jang newspaper, he boasted that he could have easily killed more boys. In his testimony, he said he lured kids to his home with the promise of food, a job, and shelter, and then tortured the boys and killed them. He said he did this almost every night. He told the police his confidence grew when he realized he could dissolve his victims’ flesh and bones overnight in a concoction of acids.
He said once the bodies of the boys were reduced to liquid, he poured the contents of the drums into a sewer or a river near his own. Javed also confessed that he had fantasized about the murders since his childhood but came up with a plan during his previous incarceration. Apparently, his urge to kill stemmed from extreme rage when he lost his fortune at the death of his mother while he was imprisoned. He wanted to make a hundred mothers cry for their sons, just as his own mother cried for him before her death. He also said the killings were revenge for the brutal treatment he received from the police.
A trial followed a few months after his arrest. Despite openly admitting to the murders, he withdrew his confession and claimed in court that he was not guilty. He insisted that he was innocent and that the statements he made to the police were done under duress. He apparently devised his false confession to draw attention to the plight of missing and runaway children from poor families living on the streets of Pakistan and the country’s lack of concern and action towards this problem.
Other accounts contradicted his revenge plot against the authorities and claimed that he actually had many friends in the police force. This reportedly helped him gain respect in the slums of Lahore and protected him from complaints from neighbors. Javed changed his story once again and testified that 20 of his friends murdered the children at his house. He admitted to it because he felt guilty for not saving them and reasoned that it was the only way that the police could be made aware of the killings.
On March 9, 2000, he changed his story for the last time, stating that there were actually no kids that had been murdered and no crimes were committed at his house. But so much evidence was stacked against Javed. The 32-page journal that he took to the Daily Channel when he surrendered was proven to be his handwriting. The journal described the gory details of the murders and how he disposed of the bodies. It was all the damning evidence the court needed to prove without a shred of doubt that Javed carried out the murders.
And then on March 15, 2000, Javed was found guilty. A lab box, the judge who presided over the case, sentenced him to death. And not just any death, but exactly the same fate as the 100 young boys he murdered. The judge 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.” The judge ordered the execution be carried out at a public park in front of a national monument. He also said the same change of method used to kill the boys should be used on him.
Javed’s attorney said he would file an appeal. Pakistan’s interior minister said the sentence would be challenged, claiming that sort of punishment would not be allowed as it violates human rights. Three of Javed’s teenage accomplices were also found guilty. The main accomplice, Sajid Ahmed, was only 17 years old at the time. He was convicted of 98 counts of murder and given a death sentence of 686 years in prison. Fifteen-year-old Mamad Nadeem was found guilty of 13 murders and sentenced to 182 years in prison, 14 years for each murderer.
And a 13-year-old, Mehmed Zabir, was handed down a term of 63 years behind bars. But on the morning of October 8, 2001, Javed, who was 45 years old at the time, and his main accomplice were found dead in their prison cells. They were hung with bed sheets in their cells at Cot Lapat Prison. Strangulation marks were discovered around the blood-splashed necks of the two prisoners. They were also bleeding from the mouth and nostrils. An injury was found around Sajid’s neck, and countless healed wounds inflicted with a blunt weapon were also found all over Javed’s body.
No one from Javed’s family claimed his money. His family members said, “We have nothing to do with him. He died for us on the day he confessed to killing 100 children.” More than two decades passed, and a film was set to be released in January 2022 about Javed’s infamous murders. But it was banned by the Punjab government and its Central Board of Film Sensors two days before its release. Many people criticized this censorship of the realities of Pakistan society, and a petition to the high court was filed for the release of the film to bring to light the issue of abuse and mass murder of young boys.
Javed’s crimes highlighted the deep-seated prejudices and lack of empathy towards marginalized sectors of the country. As horrifying as the crimes were, what is even more disturbing is that no proper actions were taken until Javed confessed to the crimes. If he never sent the letter, he would have potentially gotten away with more murders. Javed was a monstrous serial killer who committed unspeakable crimes against innocent and vulnerable children. His case did raise awareness of the dangers and problems surrounding runaway and poor children, but it is tragic that it cost a hundred lives to do so.
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