Pakistani ‘cult leader tortures to death 20 followers’

Former government official tells police he feared the victims were ‘coming to kill him’

A RETIRED Pakistan government official was arrested yesterday on suspicion of beating and stabbing to death 20 people at a local Sufi shrine. Abdul Waheed, a former deputy director of the Punjab electoral commission, was arrested along with four associates after police found 20 bodies bearing signs of torture near a shrine he manages in the Punjab town of Sarghoda.

The bodies, all of which were naked and bore multiple stab wounds, were found in a house adjacent to a shrine to Muhammad Ali Gujar, a local religious leader, police said.

“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,” said Zulfiqar Hameed, the regional police chief. “The suspect appears to be paranoid and psychotic, or it could be related to rivalry for the control of the shrine,” he said, adding that the investigation was continuing.

The shrine was built about two years ago on the grave of Gujar.

Police investigators said that Waheed had told them during questioning that he killed his disciples because he believed they had fatally poisoned Gujar, who had been his religious leader, and feared they were planning to do the same to him.

According to police sources, Waheed claimed to have initially questioned one man who confessed to the plot, and then telephoned other victims to summon them to the shrine, where he tortured them to death.

Bilal Iftikhar, a police spokesman, said Waheed had drugged his victims before killing them with batons and machetes.

Three people escaped the massacre and are in a critical condition. Police sources said they believed the killings started on Friday night but were not reported until a female survivor arrived at hospital seeking treatment for her wounds.

Liaquat Ali Chatta, a government official for the area, said Waheed appeared to be “mentally unstable” and was allegedly in the practice of “beating and torturing” devotees to “cleanse” them.

Rana Sanaullah, the Punjab law minister, said an initial investigation showed that Waheed had a collection of followers who would regularly visit the shrine and were tortured in the name of religious cleansing.

With its ancient hypnotic rituals, Sufism is a mystical form of Islam that has been practised in Pakistan for centuries.

However, in recent months, Sufi shrines have been targeted by Sunni militants who consider them heretical, including a suicide bombing by followers of Isil that killed more than 80 worshippers at Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine in southern Sindh province.