Cries of a 100 Mothers: The untold story of Javed Iabal

The families of the 100 young boys and teenagers who were raped and murdered by Javed Iqbal would not find solace in his execution alone. However, the prospect of witnessing him being hanged, dismembered, and dissolved in acid might have offered a semblance of closure. Born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1956, Javed Iqbal spent numerous years preying on vulnerable runaways, orphans, and beggars, manipulating them with promises of wealth and exploiting them in his luxurious homes and video arcades.

In 1999, Javed Iqbal shocked the public and the police by confessing to a series of horrifying crimes. He admitted to luring boys, primarily beggars and street children between the ages of six and sixteen, to his residence. There, he subjected them to sexual assault, followed by strangulation. In a final act of heartlessness, he dismembered their bodies and disposed of their remains in a container of acid. Once the bodies were dissolved, he callously poured the liquid into the sewer or river.

During his trial, the judge handed Javed Iqbal 100 death sentences, ruling that he should face the same fate as his victims. The judge ordered that he be executed using the very chain he used to strangle his victims. Additionally, the judge decreed that Javed Iqbal's body should be divided 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, one of the most brutal death sentences ever handed out was never carried out. Javed Iqbal, the perpetrator of a frenzied killing spree that lasted six months, took his own life before facing justice. Despite later denying his crimes, Iqbal had disturbing evidence that proved otherwise. He kept meticulous records of his victims, including their names, ages, and photographs. Furthermore, authorities discovered children's clothing and other sickening proof at his residence, dispelling any notion that he was merely seeking attention or fabricating his actions.

Before they could face justice, both Iqbal and one of his young accomplices were discovered hanged in their prison cells. Even though there were indications of foul play, their deaths were officially labeled as suicides.

It is astonishing to think that one hundred boys could vanish within a short period of time without anyone sounding the alarm. However, upon reflection on Iqbal's life, it becomes evident that he possessed extraordinary skills as a manipulator and groomer. He knew how to deceive others and carefully plan his actions, making it difficult for anyone to detect his sinister activities.

He even wed the older sister of one of his teenage victims as a ruse to continue his sleazy and illegal antics in private. 

The local newspaper, The Dawn, presented a horrifying depiction of a man who dedicated a significant portion of his adult life to creating situations where he could groom and sexually abuse younger boys. In an article from October 2001, they described him as someone who consistently surrounded himself with a group of teenage boys. According to people who had encountered him personally, he was referred to as a "boy hunter" who would go to extreme lengths to satisfy his desires for sexual acts. The newspaper also mentioned that he employed various methods to entice young boys, with his most successful approach being through establishing pen-friend relationships via 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.” 

Javed Iqbal and his three young co-defendants  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.