Twenty devotees tortured to death at Pakistan shrine

THE custodian of a Pakistani religious shrine and two accomplices have been arrested for torturing and murdering 20 worshippers with knives and clubs, police said.

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 killed. Some of the bodies were nude.

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 custodian, Abdul Waheed, has confessed that he killed these people because he feared they had come to kill him,” regional police chief Zulfiqar Hameed said.

Another government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Waheed had told police that the saint buried at the shrine had been poisoned and he feared that his victims might also kill him.

“The suspect appears to be paranoid and psychotic, or it could be related to rivalry for control of the shrine,” Hameed said.

The investigation into the killings near the city of Sargodha was continuing, he said.

Police station chief Shamshir Joya said the victims, whose clothes were torn and bloodstained, appeared to have been given intoxicants.

“We suspect the victims had been given some intoxicants before they were murdered, but we will wait for a forensics report to confirm this suspicion,” he said.

“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 2½ years ago. Waheed – a one-time employee of the National Election Commission – took it over upon completion.

Rescue service official Mazhar Shah said Waheed used to meet devotees once or twice a month and used violence to “heal” them.

“Local people say that Waheed used to beat the visitors who came to him for treatment of various physical or spiritual ailments,” Shah said 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, sited amid green farmland.

Visiting shrines and offering alms for the poor – and cash to the custodians – remains a popular custom in Pakistan.

Many believe this will help get their prayers answered.

Officials said intelligence agencies along with police and the local government were investigating all aspects of the case. – AFP