Horrors have a way of supplanting the horrors that came before them. In the months since Javed’s death, the country has witnessed more brutality, more death. There was the murder of Daniel Pearl, his last few horrible seconds documented by a video camera. There was the bombing at a church in Islamabad, an incident that claimed the lives of two Americans, and attacks on French and American workers in Islamabad and Karachi.

Still, life in Pakistan goes on. Children, many of them lost to the streets, still congregate in the anonymous neighborhoods of Lahore, lost in Kipling’s  “roaring whirl.”

But for all of that Javed and the legacy of his horrors have not been forgotten.

The editorial writers at Dawn put it this way:  “Javed was one of the most hated people alive, particularly after his surrender and his ‘confession’ before a magistrate.

“It may be argued however that this was less because most people found his guilt had been established beyond reasonable doubt and more because he held a mirror of sorts to society.

“Had he not shown that the grieving parents and guardians had been...negligent…that society was a jungle and there was no shelter for lost boys…that nobody was even keeping a count…that the state could not care less?”

Javed Iqbal’s  legacy, if it could be distilled into a single sentence was this, the editorial writer said. “He had practically accused all those speaking in the name of his victims of having, in fact, been his accomplices and (he) dared them to prosecute him.”