How a secret formula led to brutal murder of Kerala healer
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: On August 2, 2019, 60-year-old Shaba Shareef went missing from outside his popular traditional medicine clinic in Mysuru. For the following 14 months, he was imprisoned in Kerala’s Nilambur at the home of a man called Shaibin Ashraf. He was tortured and starved; he was chained, and a heavy roller was often used to crush his legs. He once tried to escape, but failed, and that only exacerbated the assault. Eventually, in October 2020, he was killed, his body cut to pieces and thrown into the Chaliyar river. All because he refused to part with the formula for his herbal medicine that claimed to cure piles.
Yet, this is only half the story. For Shareef’s torture and death came to light through happenstance around 20 months later. On April
28, three men attempted to immolate themselves outside the state secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram. Overpowered by police, the men revealed they were among those who had killed and tortured Shareef, that the gang had a falling out, and they were attempting to kill themselves because they were afraid of the kingpin, Ashraf. On April 30, Ashraf was arrested by a Kerala special investigation team.
The victim
Shareef was born in Mysuru, and over the years built a reputation as a “traditional healer”, following in the footsteps of his father. On most days his clinic, located in Mysuru’s Vasanth Nagar area, attracted a long queue of patients; he offered a concoction of ayurveda medicines which he said were drawn from the extracts of herbs and leaves for a spectrum of illnesses, from piles to haemorrhoids. He was most popular for the treatment of piles. The formula for the medicine was a secret that only he and his youngest son knew. It ended up being a secret that would kill him.
“We never thought that a medicine for which he charged ₹100 for would end his life. He inherited the healing technique from his father and was a third generation healer. The medicine is a concoction of herbs but apart from him and our youngest son, nobody knows what goes into it,” said Jebi Taj, his 53-year-old widow.
A mother of eight, Taj remembers the day Shareef went missing. A man on a motorcycle arrived at their modest singlestorey home in Vasanth Nagar, Mysuru, at around 4pm. Seemingly desperate, the man told Shareef that a relative was profusely bleeding on account of piles, and needed urgent help. He wanted the healer to accompany him to a nearby lodge so he could see the man. Shareef agreed to help, and went off, riding pillion. Taj does not remember the man’s name, only that he said he said he was from Kerala. She never saw her husband again.
When Shareef did not return, Taj waited for two days because it was not uncommon for her husband to make trips to Muslim shrines unannounced, but soon she filed a complaint at the Vasanth Nagar police station. A missing persons case under Section 154 of the Indian Penal Code was filed. “My son went to the police station a couple of times but he got a stock reply that the matter is under investigation,” she said. With little to go on, there was no headway in the case.
Abduction and murder
Cut, quite dramatically, to April 2022. At 11am on April 28, three men, identified as Shihabuddin, Mohammad Noushad and Zakeer stood in front of the heavily guarded state assembly in Thirvananthapuram, and began to pour kerosene on themselves. As they tried to immolate themselves, they were overpowered by the Thirvananthapuram Cantonment police, arrested, and handed over to the Malappuram police.
Then they told their story — and what a story it was. They were part of the Shaibin Ashraf gang, the three said, and along with at least six others abducted Shareef in August 2019. They told police that Ashraf wanted the details of the mixture that Shareef used to treat piles, so that he could set up a specialised hospital of his own.
“One of the accused told us that Shareef was a true ‘ustaad’ (masinto
ter). Despite the severe torture and starvation, he did not disclose his ‘ottamooli’ (secret ingredient) till his death. Even the offer of a business partnership, where Ashraf told him that they would together start a piles hospital together in Wayanad, didn’t move him,” a member of the SIT that is investigating the series of events said on condition of anonymity.
The three told police that after Shareef was killed in October 2020, they fell out with Ashraf, and on April 24, burgled his palatial home in Sulthan Bathery in Wayanad. Ashraf filed a burglary complaint at the Sultan Bathery police station on April 25, alleging that gold worth ₹10 lakh, ₹10 lakh in cash, laptops and mobile phones were stolen. “They told us that they had
indeed burgled his home in desperation because they were being duped by him. They were afraid that he was planning to eliminate them which is why they attempted the immolation to draw attention to themselves,” a second SIT member said.
As evidence, they submitted to the police a pen drive that carried video evidence of the torture, and parted with details of how Shareef was killed. Police officials said the accused brought two knives, normally used to slice mutton and buffalo meat, and purchased a 1.5-foot-long log from a timber mill owner named U Ummar in Mukatta village in Malappuram district’s Nilambar block.
“The body was cut into small pieces, after which they put it in five bags which were then thrown the swollen Chaliyar river from the Seethi Haji bridge in Edavanna. The next day, members of the gang returned to the river bank to ensure that no bag had washed up ashore. The room in which Shareef was killed had its tiles and water fittings removed to eliminate all traces of blood. We have however found blood marks and hair follicles which have been sent for DNA test,” a second member of the SIT said. Ummar, a witness in the case, later identified the accused for the SIT.
S Sujith Das, the Malappuram superintendent of police who is supervising the SIT, said: “The investigation is challenging because we have not been able to find the body thus far. We will conduct the probe scientifically to corroborate every aspect of the crime and ensure maximum punishment.” On Friday and Saturday last week, divers were deployed to search the Chaliyar river but came up empty. “We have got evidence from Ashraf’s house and sent it for forensic examinations. But our search in the river has not been that successful,” said the second SIT member cited above.
Das said the police have charged 11 people under the sections of 302 (murder), 340 (illegal confinement) and 330 (torture) and that six people, including Ashraf have been arrested so far.
On April 30, the Kerala police arrived at Ashraf’s house ostensibly to take his statement, but arrested him. The SIT also found during its investigations that a retired police sub-inspector may have been advising Ashraf. This person, too, has been questioned, but has not been arrested thus far. Ashraf, after being arrested, said: “This is a big drama, and I will come out of this unscathed.”
SIT officials also said that Ashraf’s wife has been questioned twice, as she lived with her two children on the ground floor of the house where Shareef was tortured. She has approached the Kerala high court for anticipatory bail — the matter is yet to be taken up — and has argued that she was only an occasional visitor to the Ashraf home in Nilambur.
The kingpin
The son of a car mechanic in Wayanad, Ashraf studied till Class 12, and eked out a living by driving an autorickshaw in Sulthan Bathery. But his fortunes changed after his mother relocated to the United Arab Emirates as a home nurse when he was 24. Ashraf soon joined her in Dubai. “His rise was dramatic. He told us he entered the diesel trade in UAE. We were also told he started a restaurant in Abu Dhabi and began to facilitate the travel of youngsters to the UAE. He built a large house in Sulthan Bathery and travelled in luxury vehicles,” said his neighbour V Abdullah Kutty.
Senior officers said that Ashraf returned to India in 2016, and began farming ginger in Coorg, while dabbling in textiles and lobster import. The police are looking at whether he used his businesses to cultivate contacts and draw them into organised crime.
Investigations have revealed that Ashraf, now 42, owns three houses, two in Wayanad, and the third in Nilambur. The Nilambur home is a stately white and grey two-floor mansion with a driveway, courtyard, swimming pool, and a fortified wall. In the driveway are luxury vehicles including an Audi and a Range Rover.
Crime begets crime
The SIT, instituted into the case in the first week of May, suspects that the Ashraf gang was involved in at least two other murders in Abu Dhabi, as well as abductions in Kerala and Karnataka. It has recovered an audio tape which has a conversation on how murders can be converted into “simple suicide cases”.
Meanwhile, last week, the mother of M Harris, a former business partner of Ashraf approached the Kerala police alleging that her son’s death in March 2020 was not suicide, but murder. A resident of Kunnamangalam in Kozhikode, Harris’s body was found in his flat in Abu Dhabi in March 2020 with his wrist slit. “My son would not have committed suicide. We suspect that there was an illicit affair which may have led to his murder and the references in the seized audio tape are about our son. My son often complained about a threat to his life,” she said.
The police are looking into two more alleged murders, including that of a woman based in Ernakulam. An SIT official said that there were limitations to investigating cases outside of India’s borders but that they have sought details from the Abu Dhabi police.