To entrench heavy metal chelation functional groups, native corn starch was grafted with acrylonitrile and subsequently hydrolyzed (using sodium hydroxide) to produce chemically crosslinked superabsorbent hydrogels (SAHs) of three-dimensional hydrophilic polymeric networks. SAHs demonstrated fast swelling and superabsorbent properties, with a swelling capacity of 612 g water/g SAHs. Due to the usefulness of equilibrium and kinetic data for elucidating the nature of adsorbate-adsorbent interaction, the adsorption study was extensively modelled using selected nonlinear isotherm and kinetics models. The Toth and intraparticle diffusion models satisfactorily predicted the isotherm and kinetic data, respectively, while the dominance of the metal complexation mechanism was asserted in the study. Meanwhile, the metal ion uptake by SAHs occurred at a fast equilibration time of 20 min. Furthermore, the adsorbent’s instrumental characterization (scanning electron microscopy, SEM; Energy dispersion X-ray, EDX; X-ray diffraction, XRD and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, FTIR) result confirmed that SAHs possesses the desired metal chelation properties. Thus, the potential application of the developed SAHs as biosorbent in the decontamination of the heavy metal-laden stream was explicitly demonstrated in the study.