RedHanded - Episode 360 - Javed ‘Kukri’ Iqbal: “To Make a Hundred Mothers Cry”

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

A serial paedophile and murderer, Javid Iqbal dedicated his entire existence to grooming, sexually abusing, and eventually killing young boys from the streets of Lahore. Using his father’s money, Iqbal designed his entire life – from his businesses to his home – around capturing vulnerable children who were desperate for help.By the time Iqbal had handed himself in to the police, he had sexually assaulted countless street boys and killed at least 57. But how did detectives allow it to get to that point? This is a story of police incompetence on an industrial scale.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramXVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed, where today we're off to the sunny climes of Pakistan. And aside from some chat on Imran Khan and the corruption charges against him, and I know that is a very complex and divisive issue, we only talk about it on Under

the Duvet and all of the politics and everything unraveling around that, we haven't actually been to Pakistan properly on Red Handed since episode 107 on Kandeel Baloch which if you guys remember was of course Pakistan's Kim Kardashian and the selfie that killed I was actually in a taxi the other day and the lovely taxi driver was like oh blah blah blah what do you do etc I was like oh I've got a podcast and he was like oh cool what's it about and then I was telling him and he was like oh cool what's it about and then i was telling him and he was like oh and then we had been talking before about the cricket because obviously and he's pakistani i'm of indian heritage and he was like oh have you done any pakistan case i was like well actually we're doing java dig ball and he was like oh and then he was like

have you done any others and i was like kandil baloch thank god i remembered that yeah yeah then he was like oh my god i know others? And I was like, Kandil Baloch. Thank God I remembered that one. Yeah, yeah. Then he was like, oh my God, I know everything about that case. I was there when it happened. This happened. This happened. And he wanted to have this really in-depth conversation with me. And I was like, oh my God, I sound like the biggest fraud on the planet. Because, and I don't mean this to sound awful.

It's not like every case just falls out your head afterwards. But episode 107, I couldn't remember a bloody thing except kandil's name and i was like uh-huh uh yeah yes yes so i apologize mr taxi man if you are listening as you said you would continue to do so and this is probably the only episode you will listen to if you keep your promise i'm gonna re-listen to Kandil Baloch just for the shame you brought upon me. But that is not the case we're talking about. We are, instead, heading to the 30th of December 1999, when journalists at Lahore's Urdu-speaking newspaper, The Daily Jang,

had more than just the millennium bug to worry about. When a man strolled into their offices and calmly introduced himself at the front desk as Javed Iqbal, killer of a hundred children. This unassuming guy with neatly combed hair, glasses and a cosy grey jumper had been on the run for a month by this point. He'd been the subject of Pakistan's greatest ever manhunt. As he waited for the police to arrive following his startling confession, he was a regular chatty Cathy, speaking openly with the press. And as he did this, a grisly story emerged of a six-month killing spree that nobody wanted to believe was true.

Then again, maybe it shouldn't have come as so much of a surprise. Because Javed Iqbal, known by the alias Kukri, had been terrorising the streets of Lahore as a notorious sex pest for years. And he'd been getting away with it. Needless to say, this guy was the lowest of the low. But this is also a story with more than one villain. You're welcome. Because the facts of this case also reveal widespread corruption and the real cost of poverty. This case blew open the cracks in

Pakistan's political system, as well as the plight of its estimated 1.5 million street kids. This is, on paper, the case of Javed Iqbal, But it's really the story of Lahore's lost boys. For this case in particular, context is everything. So let's find out a bit more about Lahore and Pakistan in general. Lahore is Pakistan's second largest city. It's towards the northeast of the country, in the province of Punjab, close to the Indian border. And Lahore may not be the capital, but it is considered the country's cultural heart. Famous for its rich history and architectural beauty, it's known as one of Pakistan's most socially liberal,

progressive and cosmopolitan cities. But, as in most urban megacities, the pretty postcards hide a darker underbelly that the tourist board would rather you didn't see. In contrast to the ornate Mughal-era landmarks showcasing wealth and grandeur, 30% of Lahore's inhabited areas are actually slums. And those slums house 50% of the city's population. Facing extreme poverty, it's common for children to head to the streets to try and raise money for their families. In the 90s, it was estimated that 11 million children were working in Pakistan, making up a quarter of the country's overall workforce.

Half of these children were under the age of 10, and the average age for a child to start working was just 7 years old. These kids made a living by begging, as well as working dangerous and dirty jobs, like searching for scrap metal to sell. And inevitably, many of these children ended up in the sex trade. And these children are known collectively as street children. These are kids across Pakistan and the South Asian subcontinent who, whether homeless or not, spend the majority of their time in public spaces

without adults to protect them. And it is rough out there. Research has suggested that an alarming 80 to 90% of Pakistani street kids fall victim to sexual and physical abuse, both from older children and adult strangers. Life is already incredibly risky for street children, and while some charities have attempted to provide aid, it's a systemic issue.

With nobody looking out for them, these kids are invisible and ripe for exploitation from predators, especially those who've got money and power. Enter Javed Iqbal, an overgrown man-child from a privileged Lahori family. Iqbal never strayed far from areas identified as hotspots for street children, but his was a parallel world of excess and fantasy designed to lure in the most vulnerable targets. And northwest Lahore would become the perfect hunting ground.

So yeah, context set, and we can't put it off anymore. Let's introduce the guy in question. Javed Iqbal Mogul was born in 1961 into a wealthy, well-respected family in Lahore. He was the sixth child of prominent businessman Muhammad Ali Mogul, and as the youngest of six, Javed became a bit of a daddy's boy. His parents saw him as a golden child, and he was spoiled and pampered and constantly told that he was much cleverer than his siblings.

Unsurprisingly, his siblings had less than glowing words to say about Javed, and it goes far beyond just normal sibling rivalry. One of his brothers was later quoted as saying that he genuinely believed that Javed was possessed as a child. And you can see why he may have believed this, because Javed Iqbal was aggressive and violent even from an early age, and would, serial killer klaxon please, mutilate and kill animals as a little boy. And when little Javed wanted something he couldn't have, he'd just throw fits and threaten to harm himself until he got his own way, which would go on to be something of

a party trick for him as he got older. As he reached his teenage years and started exploring his sexuality, it became apparent to those around him that Javid Iqbal was gay. Being a horny gay teen in a deeply religious country in the 70s was probably no picnic for Javid Iqbal was gay. Being a horny gay teen in a deeply religious country in the 70s was probably no picnic for Javed Iqbal. But he didn't seem to let cultural taboos get in his way. At school, Iqbal would hound his classmates for sex. And he was so persistent that he was given the nickname Boy Hunter. Ew. I'm sure it's much more atmospheric in Urdu, but... Gross.

And while some family members expressed concern over the rumours swirling about Iqbal's voracious sexual appetite for other boys, his dad, surprisingly, for Pakistan in the 70s, didn't seem to mind too much. Yeah, it is quite a mystery how H. Edward Ikebool really does not care about doing all the horrible things he does.

But the fact that his dad is also just like, oh, well, boys will be boys. Boys will be held accountable for their actions. Perhaps his dad thought it was a phase that he would just go out of. But either way, he stuck up for Ikebbal and shielded him from criticism at every turn. He was the golden boy. He could do absolutely no wrong in his parents' eyes. This early support of some already questionable behaviour would spur Iqbal on throughout a lifetime of manipulation and abuse. In his late teens, Iqbal routinely used his family's wealth as a way to attract attention,

like when he'd cruise around his school's car park on a 200cc motorbike bought for him by his dad, inspiring envy and awe from his peers. But Iqbal also cast the net wider, scouring popular teens and kids magazines to find pen pals across the country, making lists of young boys he found attractive. He'd then love-bomb these innocent kids who were just looking for a friend to write to. Iqbal would send them gifts and money, urging them to mail him photos and even visit him in person, where he'd take his ultimate prize to force these poor unsuspecting children into sex. And if you think that's bad, this is only the beginning. Because Iqbal was about to get a taste of even more freedom. In 1978, when Javed Iqbal turned 17, his father bought him his very own

villa in the Shadbag area of northern Lahore. There are so many questions about why his dad does so many of the things he does. Buying him his own flat when you already know that he's a sex pest. The denial is off the charts. Or is he just like, look, he's going to do what he's going to do. I'd rather he didn't do it in this house. Have this flat, go do it there.

I don't know. I got jack shit for my 17th birthday. 17th? I don't even remember turning 17. And it was in this birthday present flat that Iqbal started a steel recasting business and promptly filled up his workforce with a parade of young boys aged between 6 and 16. And that's not as unusual as you might think,

given Pakistan's lax child labour laws and how common it is for kids to start work when they're very young. But what was definitely weird is that Iqbal also had his employees live with him. Keeping many of his young male workers as live-in companions, Iqbal affectionately referred to them as his boys and claimed to love them. But as is probably obvious by now this was hardly a fatherly dynamic and starting a family in the traditional sense was the last thing on Jabba Iqbal's mind even if it was at the top of some of his relatives' agendas.

Because yeah, his family had been insisting that they needed to arrange a marriage for Iqbal for years. And he had been resisting at every opportunity. In countries like Pakistan, to be married beyond a certain age is just not done. It's seen as unrespectable for a man. Like, if a woman does it, it's because, like, there's something wrong with her. If a man does it, it's something wrong with you as well. But, like, it's also seen as deeply unrespectable and makes you quite suspicious

as a single older bachelor and in the long term definitely also leads to all sorts of awkward questions from the community also i have no doubt that javad ikbal's family would absolutely have believed that a marriage would have sorted him out and like got him on the straight and narrow, so to speak. But of course, Javed Iqbal wasn't having any of it. That is, until out of the blue one day, he announced in 1983 that he'd found his own bride. Was Javed Iqbal seriously ready to settle down and finally stop hanging around with underage boys? Don't be ridiculous. I'm Jake Warren and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now

exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him.

This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me, and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+.

Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death.

The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. There was another reason that Iqbal had chosen this particular girl to marry.

She was the older sister of one of his boys. By marrying her, Iqbal wanted to ensure the boy wouldn't leave him. Maybe he also thought that it would get his own family off his back and give him a facade of normality under which he could continue with his depraved behavior. The marriage did in fact go ahead, but perhaps unsurprisingly, it was dissolved after only a few months. Iqbal would actually go on to pull the exact same stunt again later, this time marrying the younger sister of another boy. But again, the marriage didn't work out. And Iqbal's family finally gave up.

I wonder why. Yeah. Because this is now bringing more shame on the family. Him getting married to various women and then it just not working. So his family reluctantly agreed to leave Iqbal to his own quote-unquote bachelor antics in peace, even if it was growing increasingly obvious that he was no ordinary bachelor. And that's because over the two decades that he lived and worked in Lahore, Javed Iqbal can only be described as fulfilling the role of the local neighbourhood pedo.

Someone said this to me the other day about, like, do you remember those neighbourhood watch signs that were in people's windows? What if they're a pedo? What if that person's a pedo? Yeah. And they're like, I'm on neighborhood watch. I'm the neighborhood watch.

Come here, little children. I mean. Do you need help? Is that what they used to say? To go there if you were in trouble? I think so. Oh, my God. No.

No, thank you. You're right. Be suspicious of everybody. And when we say that Jabba Dickball was notorious, we really mean it. Such was the extent of Dickball's noncing that we just can't go through every single offence. Most of his crimes went unreported, and even if they were reported, many never ever resulted in official charges. So we just don't have the data, and also it would take bloody ages.

So here is the depressing overview of Javed Iqbal's reign of terror, which started long before the murders for which he went down in infamy. So after growing bored of the steel recasting game, Nepo baby Javed Iqbal used his family funds to set up a string of companies over the years. But gaining a reputation as a businessman wasn't exactly his priority. Javed Iqbal's sole aim was to attract as many children as possible into his orbit, for him to be able to bring to life his sickest fantasies. One such honey trap operated in the form of a video game shop with super slashed prices and impoverished boys heaven. Javed Iqbal ran this sting with calculated precision using a routine he honed over time. He'd target a boy,

drop money near them and then wait for them to pocket it like any child would do in this situation. Iqbal would then swoop in and accuse the child of stealing the money, before taking them to a private room to conduct a strip search. Now we don't need to fill in the blanks of what would happen next. In a particularly sick detail, Iqbal would sometimes let his victims keep the money as a gesture of goodwill. The boy would leave the shop feeling ashamed, confused and terrified. Very few of them would muster up the courage or the words more importantly

to tell their families the truth. Even so, rumours began to swirl about creepy Mr Iqbal from the video shop. While parents naturally wanted to report their suspicions and some of them actually confronted him but whenever they did Iqbal would threaten them with claims that the local police were his friends and wouldn't believe a word they said. And he's probably right on that one. If the threats didn't work, Iqbal would always rely on bribery to quieten loose lips. It might seem easy to judge the families of the boys for taking Iqbal's hush money, but this is an intensely impoverished area plus the implicit understanding that Iqbal had

the police in his pocket anyway it is really understandable that the parents would take the cash yeah like what else they're gonna go do yeah the police in Pakistan infamously corrupt this guy has so much money no one's gonna give him a fucking medal for doing it and most of the time like I think you know when we said the kids couldn't find the words to describe it, I'm not sure the parents would have even had the words to describe what was happening. I completely agree.

So all the community could do was encourage their children to stay away from the weird video man. But Iqbal had money and sheer audacity on his side. If one business gained too much heat and started to attract too much negative attention, he'd just start another one, in a shockingly brazen move. At one point, Iqbal even attempted to open up a school with aircon throughout and a pedo teacher.

And he gave it the grimly ironic name, Sunnyside School. Thankfully, as no parent in their right mind would enroll their child at this school, it was quickly forced to close. But Iqbal was relentless in his pursuit of victims. He opened up discount shops, gyms, and even an aquarium, all aimed at tempting poor, impoverished lower-class boys to ignore the community's warnings and come inside anyway. And despite some hiccups, Javed Iqbal grew bolder every day in the knowledge that nobody could stop him. Frustratingly, Iqbal seemed to waltz through life

like some kind of Teflon man. Though allegations and whispers always followed him like smoke, things were more complicated when it came to yelling fire. In a strictly religious society, which obviously Pakistan is, discussing sexuality was completely taboo. So Iqbal banked on his victims' silence, plus their lack of vocabulary to even explain what happened. Not to mention, most of them were reliant on Javid for money, food and shelter. But some accusations did manage to stick. Kind of.

In 1990, a man in Shadbag reported Iqbal for raping his nine-year-old son. So Iqbal just sort of disappeared, went into hiding. And in his absence, the police held his father and a few of his brothers in custody in the hopes that it would force him out of his hidey hole. This is such classic Asian subcontinent behavior. You're looking for somebody, they run away, you take their family. You put their family in prison and humiliate them, you beat them, you torture them,

you do whatever in the hopes that that person will be like community pressure family pressure i better go back classic doesn't matter if that that family has done nothing does not matter it didn't matter to iqbal though the police clearly didn't understand his twisted loyalties or him at all i mean how do you understand a person like that? Iqbal left his dad and his siblings to rot in jail for seven days, and it was only when police arrested one of his boys on the eighth day that Iqbal finally came to take his place. And when Iqbal got to the station, he publicly kicked off his family for allowing the boy to be captured.

And if this doesn't show the entitlement and batshit logic of this guy, absolutely nothing will. Ultimately, Iqbal was let off the charges and allowed to walk free. After bribing the victim's families to drop the case. And if you're already banging your head against a wall, well, get used to it. Because it will not be the last time this happens. Iqbal's primary way of getting himself out of a jam was by throwing money around, whether it be bribing families or the cops

themselves. And while he primarily targeted boys from poorer families who had way too much to lose, Iqbal slipped up later that same year when he assaulted the son of a prominent local man. This was someone who, finally, matched his own father's wealth and status level in the community. Money talks, especially to Lahore's crooked cops. And Iqbal was finally thrown in jail. And it's interesting to note that any charges that Iqbal faced were always for the crime of sodomy, rather than specifically paedophilia.

Which again just shows how little the Pakistani legal system at the time was equipped to deal with child abuse. It is not an overestimation to say that it is just not something that anyone would talk about. It's something that most adults wouldn't even know was a thing. It's not that it didn't happen. People just didn't have a word for it. Iqbal only spent six months in prison for this incident, during which time he later complained about his poor treatment by cops. But once he got out, Iqbal likely realised that he needed to establish a better relationship with the police to stop future pesky imprisonments from messing with his plans.

Because Arlie, he became a sort of curtain-twitching jobsworth. Like the neighbourhood what? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. We're on to you. He filed loads of complaints to various departments of the police about occurrences in his community. And that way, he integrated himself with the local police force and generally got real chummy with them. He even contributed to an anti-corruption police magazine. As if that's a thing.

Oh, yeah. I mean, look, you think the cops here are bent and corrupt. Take a little visit, my friends, over to the subcontinent because, yeah, it's just, it's just baked in. And everyone just like goes along with it like it's a normal part of life and people just almost put aside like corruption payments as like part of like, like it's a tax. And it's so sad

because there's just very few people that are there who can challenge this kind of behavior. So I can believe that the Pakistani police had like an anti-corruption magazine to talk about how unbent they fucking were. So Iqbal would interview various presumably bent coppers, praise them for all of their hard work stamping out crime in the community,

and then, of course, he would make donations. And remember this, because a few years down the line, Jabba Iqbal will be changing his tune pretty drastically. Yeah, he loves the police while they're willing to do his bidding. As for the police, these guys had either incredibly short memories or they really just didn't give a shit about keeping actual criminals off the street.

Even if they are routinely running child sexual assault factories and everybody knows about it. I also think there is possibly, and I'm not making any excuses to the police, if anything, I'm doing the opposite. I think there's a touch of, like, the Jeffrey Dahmers about this, right? Where, like, they know there's horrible shit going on, but they almost don't want to get into that world.

They're like, this guy's a fucking wrong-in, but he's got loads of money, he keeps giving it to us, which we love. And he's up to some horrible, dirty, filthy shit. Don't really want to get my toes into that. Just let him carry on doing what he's up to some horrible, dirty, filthy shit. Don't really want to get my toes into that. Just let him carry on doing what he's doing. And crucially, it all worked. After assaulting two youths at gunpoint, Javed Iqbal was brought into the station again. But the incident was referred to a panchayat,

which is basically like a village council neighbourhood watch. Yeah, so this is again very very typical of that part of the world you'll have village elders because you know a lot of these communities did at one time live very tribally and arguably still very much continue to do so and so they would have had this system of like law enforcement, governance, judicial hearings within the village itself. So it'd be like the village elders, a little council of older men. They'll hear what everybody's got to say, and then they'll dole out what they think is a justified punishment.

We've come across this before. I think particularly with that case we covered with the author Sonia Falero about the girls in an Indian village who had been raped and then found hanging. These panchayats are not the best. They're all about covering up the crimes that have taken place within a village, but they can be very

hardcore in their punishments that they dole out. But they'll often punish the victim just as much. So, for example, if a woman is raped, the outcome of this panchayat could be that the rapist marries her because she's been touched by him anyway. So, yeah example, if a woman is raped, the outcome of this panchayat could be that the rapist marries her. Because she's been touched by him anyway. So, yeah, great justice. All round. And to say that their idea of punishment was slightly softer than we might think appropriate is an understatement.

In this case, because he's got money. The elders order Dick Bull to sign a document promising to never ever do it again. Classic. Copies of the agreement were distributed around the neighbourhood and Iqbal visited a hundred shops to apologise personally for his transgression. Basically Iqbal got a slap on the wrist and had to swear he'd pull his socks up. Which, spoilers, mon saucisse, never happened. In 1993, Iqbal's dad, his greatest financial and personal protector, passed away. And Iqbal found himself cut off from the rest of the family, who were disgusted by his reputation

and lifestyle. And with daddy no longer around to defend him, Iqbal was finally pushed out of the Shagbad neighbourhood and flogged publicly by locals. Wow. Yeah, classic. Again, just classic behaviour. But the blow was cushioned slightly by the tasty sum of his 3.5 million rupi inheritance from his father. So exiled from Shagbad, Iqbal moved to Ranatown, an area on the other side of the Ravi River, overlooking a large slum. There he built a luxurious mansion, which he called his palace. Iqbal continued his long tradition of having several young boys living with him, and townspeople often saw Iqbal cruising around in fancy cars with boys crowded in the back seat.

I was going to take a shot at someone who calls the house a palace or like, oh, let's just go back to the palace. But then I remembered that when I was at university, we all called my friend's house the Vatican. Why? I don't know. That's the most important part of the story I can't remember and I never thought this would happen with you but it's like when you go on um obviously not tiktok because I don't go

on tiktok I see everything six months later on instagram but when you go on instagram people like uh my boyfriend's beige thing is and I'm like it's 100% for Sam it's just like no details whatsoever the other day he was like oh my friend went to go have dinner at Richard E Grant's house the other day look at these pictures and I was like why how come why was he there day he was like oh my friend went to go have dinner at richard grant's house the other day look at these pictures and i was like why how come why was he there and he was like i don't know yeah he's it's a fucking hell i'm like why didn't you ask and he's like oh yeah my my really good friend and his girlfriend split up and he's like isn't that sad i'm like yeah why don't i don't know i haven't asked Richard E. Grant grew up in Swaziland. His dad was an alcoholic and he poured his whiskey down the drain when he was 12 and

his dad shot at him and he missed. He was going to shoot him in the head. Fucking hell. Yeah, I know. Wow. And he is allergic to alcohol. So everything you see in Withnail and I, where he's drinking all the time, is false. And there's a bit where he like spits out some vodka or something. And it was vinegar.

So like the gagging he does is real. Wow. So he can't drink? Not. I don't mean this to sound mean. Because I very much like Richard E. Grant. But I've never seen a man look more like an alcoholic. Who is not a drinker.

Yeah, he never has. He's allergic. Well, there you go. Desert Island Discs, my friends. Educate yourselves. Maybe you'll find out on there why sam's friend was having dinner there because i'll never know so anyway this is what's going on he's got this mansion he's driving around the town with this fancy cars and the kids all in

and of course again these kids know he's fucked up the kids know he's doing horrible things to them but also they live incredibly impoverished lives in slums. This is like a sliver of something interesting and fun and excessive and rich that they get. And the price they have to pay is horrible. But you can understand why this was happening. And Iqbal knew exactly what he needed to do to keep his, I want to say secret, it's not a secret, you know what I mean, his lifestyle under wraps. He kitted the mansion out with widespread security cameras and a vast underground space beneath the house. Down there, he had the freedom to do

whatever he liked, away from prying eyes. A common thread throughout Javed Iqbal's life is that he was constantly surrounded by a harem of young, underage boys, kind of like a pedo pied piper. But why did all of those boys flock to him? Because flock they did. Especially as he grew older, he was the textbook example of a creep. Surely, though, most streetwise kids would run a mile. But what you have forgotten is that Iqbal was, above all else, manipulative. He'd learned from an early age that power and the promise of stuff could get him pretty much whatever he wanted, especially in a part of the world that is particularly impoverished.

And he also, perhaps more importantly, knew how teenage boys' minds work. He had a knack for identifying what these poor kids dreamed of most in the world, and he would offer it up to them on a platter to ensnare them. Just as he had impressed his classmates with a flash motorbike as a teenager, the adult Iqbal used his palace, as he called it, as yet another trap to lure kids from the nearby slums. The mansion boasted a large pool, a pond, and a makeshift petting zoo filled with various exotic animals. With a revolving door of vulnerable boys to abuse at will, Iqbal was in his element. He later reminisced about these years as the happiest of his whole life, saying,

I had such fun with all of my friends. And look, this case happens in like the late 90s. But even just what you said there, it makes it sound like some sort of Victoriana case. This like menagerie of like exotic animals that he's got in a petting zoo in his mansion and like little boys come and nobody takes any notice that he's pulling these like street urchins off the roads and like abusing them and like some sort of fagonesque rapist exactly that exactly that

but i think again that speaks to the context of the city that we are in where the police were all too happy to look the other way but saying that the sun was about to set on javid iqbal's golden years in september 1998 after iqbal hired a boy for a massage and then sexually abused him this time him. This time, the boy took revenge. And look, I'm not gonna say like vigilante. It's a good thing. But it's very hard not to be on the boy's side because what he did was he got a friend of his and together they bludgeoned Iqbal over the head, leaving him with a skull fracture and a broken jaw. Iqbal was actually in a coma for over 22 days at Lahore General Hospital. And when he woke up, things weren't going quite as he'd planned. Iqbal had expected his mates in the police to investigate the cases of robbery and assault against him.

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the cards weren't stacked in Iqbal's favour. Despite Iqbal facing a long road to recovery and a mountain of medical bills, nobody in his family was willing to help him pay for his treatment. Finally, I was expecting his dad to jump in and bribe the police to see if he was uh out for the count dad's dead oh yeah that explains it yeah dad's dead by this point um but yeah no that that

that is the pattern under which iqbal had been operating for so long that i'm sure he himself forgot that he doesn't have his, you know, supporter, biggest supporter, financially, emotionally, familially, standing in the wings ready to bail him out. Yeah. And because of that, all of his assets, including his precious palace, his car and his businesses, were all sold. So Javed Iqbal was left battered, bruised and skint. How could the police have fucked him, the victim of a vicious assault, over like this? Well, karma's a bitch. Sometimes.

Whilst Iqbal was being forced to taste the bitter pill of his own medicine, his mother's health also started to decline, and she ended up passing away from a fatal heart attack no doubt exacerbated by the stress of her son's life of crime although in Iqbal's diaries he seems adamant that his mother's stress was only because she was sympathetic towards him and his injuries there's not even much point like even just talking about what a narcissist Javed Iqbal is we're going to discover that in full force through the rest of this episode. But the idea that his mum died

because she was so sad that two boys had attacked him, not because of the years of stress he had put on her by being the town rapist is quite staggering and it gives you a good insight into his mind and his way of thinking.

We did look up how to say delusional in Urdu, but it's too hard. I actually did look it up and I didn't write it down. Wait, let me see if I can. I don't speak Urdu just so everybody knows. Delusional. Oh, fuck it out. Where's the little thing gone that tells you how to say it? Delusional in Urdu here we go what great just in that voice only yeah i can only say it in that intonation and in that voice

she's my new tuning fork for erdo jabbage being the narcissist that he is, described this particular period of his life as breaking a hell over him. It also marked the moment that he made a murderous pledge to the world. This is what he wrote. My mother cried for me.

I want a hundred mothers to cry for their children. And this was a catastrophic injury, not just for Javed, but eventually it would be for the boys all over Lahore as well. So yeah, if you were thinking that we were coming to a close, that somehow the reign of Javed Iqbal was nearly over, strap in because it's about to get a whole hell of a lot worse. Because now, Javed Iqbal turned his sights to murder. And despite having been forced to relocate to a dingy three-bed flat in the slums of northwest Lahore with a few of his loyal boys,

you can see absolutely that the delusions of grandeur and his overblown sense of self still really shine through. I mean, I think that statement that you read, Hannah, really sums it all up. The idea that this injury made my mother cry for me and my mother's tears and my pain is worthy of a hundred mothers crying for a hundred dead boys. Absolutely.

So yeah, this idea of him being attacked, needing to be cosmically balanced with the murder of a hundred other boys really sets the tone for the real shift that we're about to see in his behaviour. And Javed Iqbal began his killing spree in May 1999. In his diary, because yes, for some reason, all of these fucking serial killers keep a diary, a very detailed diary. It's the narcissism, man.

It is, it is, absolutely. And you know he's reading it back. For sure. So yeah, in this diary that he kept, Iqbal described the final moments of his first murder victim in gleeful detail. The boy was a 14-year-old from Faisalabad who Javed sedated with sleeping tablets in orange juice before placing a gas mask on his face and administering cyanide while he was unconscious. The boy died within 10 seconds. Javed then placed his body in acid, marvelling at how it turned to liquid in just one night. Following this, over the next six months, dozens more boys would meet their ends at the hands of Javed Iqbal,

drugged, sexually assaulted, strangled, and then finally dumped in either vats of acid or the murky depths of the Ravi River. On this so-called mission to make a hundred mothers cry, Iqbal wrote that he planned to, quote, send their sons to the next world without coffins, through the gutter. Because he's liquefying them. Yeah. And also because they're in Pakistan. The majority of people that we're dealing with in this story are Muslim, and it's very important for Muslims to bury their dead. And he is taking that away from the families in like one last cruel way to punish them.

And this mission of a hundred crying mothers was one Iqbal undertook at a terrifying speed. He killed almost every single night. Iqbal also employed the boys who lived with him to help him out, sending them out to hunt for new victims, just like a twisted faggot, like Saru said before. And kind of like David Parker Ray's daughter. So many. I mean, Dean Correll, who I know we haven't covered, but there's so many cases where you have this kind of man at the top or person at the top who is orchestrating crimes against children and has a group of children who are intimately involved who they can use to sort of dispatch as being lures to bring more children into their orbit.

It's very, very classic behavior. Yeah, it's Ghislaine. So while he was either hunting himself or sending out his boys to hunt for him, Iqbal focused on tried and tested hot spots, like the local bus station, a common haunt for runaways, and also the nearby park, which was always teeming with street children hustling for work. His victims were aged between 6 and 16, but what they all had in common was their proximity to the public squares and streets where Iqbal prowled for his prey. One boy, affectionately nicknamed Caca after the famous Brazilian football player, vanished after accepting an assignment to massage his boss for double pay. Another nine-year-old, Faisal Rakaaz, vanished after accepting an assignment to massage his boss for double pay.

Another nine-year-old, Faisal Rakaaz, never returned home from his shift at a workshop folding cardboard boxes with a lot of other young boys. Countless other children disappeared in similar circumstances, although most were not reported missing due to the precarious nature of their lifestyles. The boys would be lured to Iqbal's apartment with the promise of whatever they needed most, money, food, shelter, affection, fun. Board games and sweet wrappers were later

found at this house of horrors, showing how Iqbal had lulled these kids into a false sense of security before he struck. The children's circumstances and methods of entrapment would change from night to night, but Iqbal's endgame stayed exactly the same. And nobody who went into the flat, 16B Rabi Road, would ever go home again. As always, Iqbal wasn't exactly discreet about what he was doing either. He apparently told his brothers several times

that he had prepared a chemical which would turn someone into a skeleton in minutes. So, you know, not just putting it in the diary, just putting it out there. Now, it's unknown why his brothers didn't raise the alarm at this point, officially speaking. I think we can take some pretty good guesses. I think their family name has been dragged through the mud quite a bit

by their brother, whom they suspected was actually possessed as a child. So, I'm not making excuses for the brothers. Of course they should have told somebody that their fucking psycho brother was saying stuff like this. But I suspect they really just wanted to be shot of him. So, Javed Iqbal carried on unchecked, night after night. But as it turns out, it wouldn't last forever. Because Iqbal couldn't resist his moment in the limelight.

Again, speaking very much to the deeply enduring narcissism at the core of this man. They always do. That's why they always confess. Yeah. So in late November 1999, the local police station received a confession. A letter sent to the police headquarters explained how the writer had murdered a hundred beggar children and disposed of their bodies. It gave details, including many of the victims' names, how they died and even how much the acid he bought to liquefy them had cost. And this letter gave an insight into just how easy it had been to target Lahore's vulnerable street children. And it wasn't signed from hell.

It was signed by Jabberdick Ball. Freely sharing his name and address, Iqbal invited officers to come and see his house of horrors for themselves. Police were initially unsure whether this was genuine or an elaborate hoax intended to set Iqbal up. Why would that be? The mental gymnastics you have to do to think that it's a hoax. Iqbal up. Why would that be true? The mental gymnastics you have to do to think that it's a hoax.

I mean, okay, I'll like be quiet for a sec, but that is shocking. But thankfully, a few officers took the bait and they went to Rabbie Road in a search of answers. And when they interviewed Iqbal on his doorstep, he suddenly became volatile and grabbed a gun, threatening to kill himself if they didn't fuck off. And how did they deal with that?

They fucked off. Unbelievably, officers took Javid at his vehement denials and left the scene without even attempting to go inside and investigate. One of the officers sagely remarked, This guy can't be the killer of a hundred kids. He's a nutcase. The activity of a sane man is killing children. Now once Javed Iqbal had calmed down,

he was probably just as confused as anyone why his murderous confession hadn't picked up any steam with the police. So he tried again. He was desperately trying to start, I think, a cat and mouse game with the cops. But the cat was just too lazy to even chase him. Yeah, he wants like a car chase. He wants to jump out windows. Absolutely.

And look, obviously, we've talked about this before. We're not going to diagnose him. We don't know. But obviously, there are some signs here that are very, very hard to ignore of what you're seeing. And it's very typical of what we see in serial killers. We're going to go into some more depth of like what type he is like from what we can see. But he's bored. He's bored. He spent his entire life, you know, abusing these kids, getting away with it. Then he escalates to murder after he feels there's a great injustice done to him and now he absolutely wants to be the protagonist he wants that main character lead character fucking energy in his life where the

police are chasing him they're hunting him he's hiding he's getting away with it because for him he's killed so many kids and no one's even blinked an eye it's too boring for him but the police just don't get involved. And we have seen this before, actually. So what does Javed Iqbal do? Well, he does what anybody who really wants eyes on them when they're trying to achieve this sort of thing does. He forgot the police and he went to the press,

which is usually what the victims do. But Javed Iqbal absolutely sees himself as the victim. Yes, good point. So it fits the profile. On the 22nd of November, 1999, a package arrived at the Daily Jang newspaper with another

confession letter. But now, just, you know, for some added spice, it also contained photographs of multiple victims taken by Javid himself, shortly before those boys' deaths. And also a 32-page diary detailing his crimes. This was, of course, pretty much impossible to ignore.

Javed also made his demands clear, writing, quote, I want you through your newspaper to tell the world what I have done. Now look, again, killers going to the media is not unusual. No. But typically, they do it and still hide their identity. Like the Zodiac went to the police because he was probably bored. The police were nowhere near even looking in his direction, most likely. So he ups the ante because it's boring for him to just kill loads of people and get away with it. It's not always that fun. I'm not saying that's true for all killers before

people come to me. I know there are lots of serial killers who just want to kill and get away with it and then, you know, be in their fucking 80s mowing their lawn and cooking a pot roast in the kitchen and nobody has any clue for example take d'angelo but some killers want this attention but javid inkpore is quite a rarity in that he actually uses his name absolutely now crime reporter jamil kishti rushed to rabbi road with a colleague, only to find the place abandoned and Javid nowhere to be found. Now, we would love to say that now is when an actual police investigation took place, but once again, Javid had taken matters into his own hands. So, the now-abandoned flat on Rabby Road was a treasure trove, not just of helpful clues.

It was a massive neon sign pointing to exactly what Javid had done to avoid any misinterpretation or misunderstanding. And when they got there, investigators found a truly gruesome scene. Evidence was strewn about the flat in abundance. We're talking piles of bin bags packed full of victims' clothes, including 85 pairs of shoes. I don't know why shoes upset me so much, but they really do. It's because nobody left without their shoes.

If it's a top, you can think, oh, you know, that person could have left without that. No one's walking out of the house and leaving their shoes behind. And other traces of the brutal crimes that happened there were everywhere also, like sleeping pills, heavy chains, gas masks and bloodstains on the walls. Photographs of the victims were also found in plastic bags, with neatly labelled notes providing details like their names and where they'd come from. Any last bit of doubt about the legitimacy of Iqbal's claims was totally eliminated when investigators found partially dissolved remains in two large barrels of acid. Cards were pinned all over the walls with scrawled details of the murders. One particular card suggested a vigilante-style motive. It read, turned into a breeding ground of crime. Runaway children seek refuge here and learn to commit

murder, theft, pickpocketing and get involved in immoral activities. If the government can't stop this, then ordinary people will have to find their own solution, as I did. Said the fucking pedo. Yeah, I mean, again, with Javed Iqbal, it's spin, spin, spin, spin, spin. He is a long time child sexual abuser who then becomes himself the victim of a quote unquote crime. And then what we see is this transformation of Iqbal from a child rapist to a mission-orientated killer. We've talked about mission-oriented killers before. We've talked about mission-orientated killers before, we go into it at length in the book, and you know, I think the name of this type of killer

is quite self-explanatory. Essentially, they're killers who basically start to create a narrative around the murders that they're committing, claiming that it is for some higher purpose, typically. Saying that basically they have a mission, they're some sort of vigilante-style killer who is doing it to rid the world of some sort of scourge. Yeah, like the Yorkshire Ripper. Yes, so be it gay people, be it sex workers, be it whatever. This type of person is what is wrong with society,

is what's destroying our society. The police won't do anything about it. I am having to do this to save us all from this scourge. The Green River Killer is a perfect example. And I bring him up particularly because highest body count of any killer, I believe, in the US and therefore in the world, Gary Ridgway, he basically killed sex workers. And he claimed that it was because he needed to cleanse the world of their evil toxic existence so it's to make himself feel more highfalutin right more pure more pious there's a greater purpose to why he's yeah he's maybe doing something that people don't agree with like killing people but he's doing it with a really moral purpose i call bullshit on almost

all mission-oriented killers because, Gary Ridgway, you had sex with all those women before you killed them. That, to me, immediately undermines the very moral superiority with which mission-oriented killers like to talk about themselves. And that's the same here with Javed Iqbal. And investigators had stumbled into Iqbal's own personally curated archive

of murder. And if your head is spinning with the mixed messages, soz, it's only scratching the surface. Because despite his apparent desire for recognition, Javed Iqbal was nowhere to be seen. Written confessions found at the flat

indicated that he planned to kill himself in the Ravi River. But despite searching the river with nets, no body was found. The largest manhunt in Pakistani history was launched, as public outcry reached a fever pitch that gripped the nation. The Pakistani tabloids had, of course, published incredibly gory details of the crimes, as well as the evidence left from the flat, including images of 57 confirmed missing boys and photographs of their clothing.

Now look, I can confirm my family are from India whenever we spent summers there. The way in which the news is reported, particularly crime news, they show you everything. They're like, here's this dead body, look at this dead body. So if we think it's sensational here, my God. There is a story seared into my mind from when I was probably like in my early teens, talking like 13, 14. We were in India one summer.

There was this case where there was like an asylum, right? Where they had been keeping patients chained up and there was a fire and this fire had torn through the building and killed everybody that was there oh my god they were just showing images of and video of these burnt beyond recognition bodies chained to the floor i will never ever get that image out of my head and it wasn't no warnings just on like the 9 p.m news like it's fucking normal behavior so yeah they will have gone to town with the evidence that they found a javadik was flat so scores of desperate families opened the morning paper the next day to discover that they're missing to discover that their missing sons had fallen prey to a sick killer.

Fulfilling, sadly, Javed Iqbal's evil prophecy. Mothers wept in the streets for their boys who would never return home. So that meant the hunt was on to track down Javed Iqbal, the pedo-pie-piper. Despite a string of arrests capturing Javed Iqbal, the pedo-pie-piper. Despite a string of arrests capturing Javed's apparent accomplices, they were, of course, in reality, the live-in teenage posse that he had brainwashed and groomed. Children. Javed managed somehow to stay on the run for a whole month,

until the morning of the 30th of December, 1999, where we started this story. Javed Iqbal walked into the offices of the Daily Jang and handed himself in. He announced, I am Javed Iqbal, killer of a hundred children. I hate this world. I am not ashamed of my actions and I am ready to die. He claimed he went to the newspaper because he was afraid for his life

and concerned the police would beat and kill him. Newspaper staff swiftly alerted the authorities and over a hundred soldiers surrounded the building in the period before the police arrived to make sure that the all-important arrest would not be foiled. But in the meantime, Javid was absolutely loving this media circus. I just hate that he gets what he wants. I know. He courted the cameras and engaged in interviews with reporters, offering the Pakistani public their first insight into the mind of a serial killer.

In the vein of his confession letters, Javed Iqbal was adamant that the killings were all part of his bizarre mission to get justice for himself as a victim of society's ills. He claimed, I did it to avenge an attempt on my life by my boys, the death of my mother, and injustice in society. He stressed the importance of stopping at a hundred victims, saying, I could have killed 500. This was never the problem problem but the pledge I had taken was of 100 and I never wanted to violate this

I mean what is happening again I think he got bored I think he got bored it was too easy I know this sounds so horrific but for him murdering these poor overlooked impoverished ignored

street children was like shooting fish in a barrel. So he was like, that'll do. Now I want the next level up, which is the press attention. And there is a fun, fun, there is a fact, a thought, some folklore that exists around Javed Iqbal in this story and why he chose the number 100. Apparently, it's because of the number of times he was flogged by police

whilst doing time for previous sodomy charges. He is just so poetic. So yes, poor Javed Iqbal viewed himself as a helpless victim of a corrupt police force, despite having spent the better part of two decades benefiting from that same exact system. So yes. Okay. But it is irritating that he got what he wanted. However, he is off the streets, even if he had to be the one to take himself off them.

I think that's what's so unsatisfying about this story, is that he escalates and escalates and escalates and gets what he wants and what he wants and what he wants. And in the end, even getting caught is what he wanted. All things considered, it did seem incredibly unlikely that Javed Iqbal would ever walk free. Over a hundred witnesses testified against him at trial, detailing years of abuse and paedophilia long before the murders had started. Interestingly, at trial,

Javed changed tack completely from his confession letter and previous remarks to the press, of course. He now was claiming that he was innocent and the whole thing was just one big hoax gone wrong. For God's sake. Because now he's bored again. because now he's bored again yes he's bored again and uh just has the brass neck of the highest order he tried to argue that all of this was just a publicity stunt designed to draw attention to the plight of runaway children from poor families in the sorry state of child welfare in pakistan fucking imran khan hire him as your spin

doctor because honestly this man it's on another level to any killer we've come across really before i completely agree um and i think we have to accept that he would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for the literal human remains in his apartment even the meddling kids yeah these meddling kids exactly quite literally those meddling kids that you've liquefied in your house so unsurprisingly and very thankfully maybe not that surprising i think the judge wasn't having any of javid Iqbal's laughable defence and he was found as guilty as sin. What came next, his sentencing, caused an international stir. Judge Allah Bax initially ordered for Javid to be put to death in a way that would replicate the ordeal that he put his victims through.

Which is some creative sentencing. Basically, the judge ordered that Javed Iqbal die by strangulation in the public square that he had used to hunt for victims, with his body to then be cut up into a hundred pieces and dissolved in acid. Which is something. Judge Bax basically said that this followed an ancient Islamic legal concept drawn from Sharia law, known as Kisas, which is pronounced like kiss-ass, but is written Q-I-S-A-S,

if anybody wants to look it up. It basically roughly translates along the lines of like an eye for an eye a literal eye for an eye you poke me in the eye i'm poking you in the eye in the same exact place you did it makes the whole world blind it does indeed but when the council of islamic ideology and the international human rights commission stepped in they told the judge to slow his roll and javid's sentence was reduced to just a good old-fashioned hanging, which does still happen in Pakistan. A particular bone of contention with the case is that three of Javed's so-called boys were also handed harsh sentences for their participation in the murders. 17-year-old Sajid

Ahmad was also sentenced to death, while 15-year-old Mahmad Nadine was given 182 years in prison. The youngest of these boys, Mahmad Sabir, was only 13 years old when he was sentenced to 63 years behind bars. Despite being victims themselves, they received little sympathy from the prosecution and

the public, and were branded as accomplices. The gavel was banged, and the case was closed. As it turned out, the public wouldn't branded as accomplices. The gavel was banged and the case was closed. As it turned out, the public wouldn't have to wait long to see Pakistan's most notorious killer meet his permanent end. Sorry Imran Khan, he can't help you anymore. Still though, the case took a final twist when, in October 2001, Javed Iqbal and his teenage lodger, Sajid Ahmad, were both found dead in their respective cells at the Kot Lakpat jail.

While their deaths were officially ruled as suicides by hanging using bedsheets, their bodies showed clear signs of beating, and they were covered in blood, which doesn't generally happen when you hang yourself. However it went down, though, the monster who destroyed countless young lives and blown a hole in Pakistani society forever had finally drawn his last breath. So now the obvious question remains.

Why? We've said it before and I'll say it again. We're not psychologists, we're not psychiatrists, we don't know what we're talking about. So obviously we can't diagnose java dickball with anything apart from being a pathological fucking nonce but it does seem like the spoiled mummy's boy turned violent narcissist trajectory is alive and well in this case oh my god it just immediately also reminds me of like chris watts scott peterson god coming from a privileged background and permissive family structure Oh my God, it just immediately also reminds me of like Chris Watts and Scott Peterson.

God. Coming from a privileged background and permissive family structure, Javed Iqbal clearly wasn't used to people telling him no and reacted violently to any perceived oppression. But these weren't exactly crimes of passion. He was an organized criminal who meticulously engineered every aspect of his life to attract yet more victims. It wasn't just his dirty little secret, he was very open about it. Javed Iqbal and his murderous ways was a lifestyle. What's perhaps more unusual about

Javed Iqbal is just how brazen he was in his sexual offending even before the murders began. The unique cultural elements of this case created an ideal environment for him to act out his darkest fantasies without the fear of consequences, which is how he reached a supposed target of 100 victims in such a short space of time. But if we're being honest, the whole mission, like I said, sounds like total bullshit it clearly played a role in terms of how he structured his murders and the mini publicity tour he did before his trial i also think javid equal is probably was probably delusional enough to think that if he came out with this bullshit around a mission-oriented motive to take out these street kids that are running amok with crime,

maybe he thought he'd get away with it. I have no doubt that he thought he was going to get away with it. But yeah, despite whatever Javed Iqbal says, realistically, he is just your classic, disgusting, child-predator-turned-murderer who got off on making children suffer. And no amount of flip-flopping manifestos can convince us otherwise.

No, exactly. And I'm only saying this because I know it would upset him. Garden variety, mate. Yeah, yeah. Despite taking place over 25 years ago, this case continues to have a massive legacy in Pakistan and even beyond. The number 100 was never fully corroborated, we only have

Iqbal's word for it, but 57 photos of victims in Iqbal's flat were officially matched up to missing boys and that was confirmed by the families. He of course detailed more murders in his diaries than the ones we have photos of and some of those were also linked to missing boys. But if the 100 murders is true it does put Iqbal up there with the most prolific serial killers in history anywhere in the world. He actually comes third on the list behind only Luis Garavito with 193 victims and Pedro Lopez who I think we did last year with 113 and weirdly both of those men are Colombian. With this case, of course, though, the murders are just the tip of the iceberg. Whether he really intended to or not,

Javed Iqbal did draw attention to the plight of street children in Pakistan, and the issue of police corruption and mass poverty as well. In June 2023, a Lollywood movie, yes, that's a portmanteau of Lahore and Hollywood, was made about this case. Just a day before it was due to be released, it was pulled from cinemas due to censorship from the Punjab government, who feared that it made the police look bad and would undermine public trust. Which I'm sure is in abounds anyway. But flying Quran, shooting lasers lasers they're fine yeah ultimately what we can learn from this case is that stories like this are rarely just about one lone monster while there's no doubt that javed iqbal was a dangerous twisted sick individual he also had a massive leg up, thanks to the corrupt

police forces in his home city. He preyed on vulnerable victims who had the odds stacked against them from the start, using his privilege to evade justice and exploit the poverty that surrounded him. And if we think it couldn't happen again because, well, Javed Iqbal's dead, then we're deluding ourselves. Police corruption is still rife in Pakistan. In fact, in 2023's Corruption Perception Index, the country was given a score of 29 out of 100. And just in case you don't know how to read that index, the lower the score, the more corruption that's kicking about. It would be weird if it was like, 95. Yeah. Well done.

Yeah. Yeah. And an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 children are currently living and working on Lahore streets, just like the Lost Boys, whose lives ended at 16B Ravi Road back in 1999. Despite what Javed Iqbal might have wanted you to think, these boys weren't dispensable. Some were homeless, estranged from their families or even orphans. But others, most of them, were loved and had families relying on them to make a bit of extra money. They were all somebody's son, brother, friend. Their lives had meaning and I think it's so easy

with cases like this to be like, well no one was looking for them. The police weren't looking for them. Their families were looking for them. So as scary as a serial killer like Javed Iqbal might be, I think what's even more frightening is a world where the people who are supposed to protect kids like this just don't. Yeah, I think you've said

this years ago, but if an adult asks you for help, run away. They don't need help from you kids no adult will ever need your help never so yeah that's it uh very very horrible story but did take us to a different part of the world where we haven't been in a while yes hopefully you all learned something and um yeah that's that yes i agree i agree we all agree hopefully you agree too and we will see you next week for a different case. Goodbye.

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