Devotees tortured, killed at Sufi shrine

THE custodian of a shrine and two accomplices were arrested for torturing and murdering 20 worshippers with knives and clubs yesterday.

Four women were among those killed in the attacks at the Sufi Shrine to Mohammad Ali in Punjab province.

Victims were apparently given intoxicants before being slaughtered and some of the bodies were nude.

The motive was unclear but police said the chief suspect had mental health problems and had used violence on followers before. “The 50-year-old shrine custodian, 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, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Waheed had told police that the saint buried at the shrine was poisoned and he feared his victims might kill him too.

“The suspect appears to be paranoid and psychotic, or it could be related to rivalry for 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.

“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 onetime employee of the national election commission — took it over upon completion.

Local rescue service official Mazhar Shah said Waheed used to meet devotees once or twice a month. “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.

“Sometimes he would remove the clothes of his visitors and burn them.” 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.

Punjab Minister for Religious Affairs Zaeem Qadri said intelligence agencies, 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. — AFP