20 people tortured to death at Pakistan shrine: Police
ISLAMBAD: The chief of a Pakistani shrine and two accomplices have been arrested for torturing and murdering 20 worshippers with knives and clubs on Sunday, police said.
Four women were among those killed in the attacks at a shrine in Punjab province. Victims were apparently given intoxicants before being killed.
The motive was unclear but some officials said the chief suspect had mental health problems and had used violence on followers before.
“The 50-year-old shrine chief, Abdul Waheed, has confessed that he killed these people because he feared that they had come to kill him,” regional police chief Zulfiqar Hameed said.
Another local government official said Waheed had told police that the saint buried at the shrine had been poisoned and he feared that his victims might kill him also.
“The suspect appears to be paranoid and psychotic, or it could be related to rivalry for the control of shrine,” Hameed said, adding that the investigation into the killings near the city of Sargodha was continuing.
Local police station chief Shamshir Joya said the victims, whose clothes were torn and bloodstained, appeared to have been given intoxicants.
“We suspect that the victims had been given some intoxicants before they were murdered, but we will wait for a forensics report to confirm this suspicion,” he added.
“The victims were brutally tortured to death and apparently the clothes of some victims were torn off during it,” he said. Six of the dead were from the same family.
Joya said the shrine was built some two and a half years ago. Waheed — a one-time employee of the national election commission — took it over upon completion.
“Local people say that Waheed used to beat the visitors who came to him for treatment of various physical or spiritual ailments,” Shah told reporters in televised comments.
Television footage showed scattered shoes, clothes, sheets and cots in the yard of the white-painted domed shrine as police vehicles and police commandos surrounded the premises, sited amid green farmland.
Visiting shrines and offering alms for the poor — and cash to the custodians — remains a very popular custom in Pakistan. Many believe this will help get their prayers answered.
Punjab Minister for Religious Affairs Zaeem Qadri said intelligence agencies along with police and the local government were investigating all aspects of the case.
Qadri said his department managed some 552 shrines in the province, but this one was not registered with it.
“Investigators will also look into how this shrine was allowed to be set up on private land,” he said.