The custodian of a Pakistani religious shrine and two accomplices have been arrested for torturing and murdering 20 worshippers with knives and clubs early on Sunday, police have said.
The attack took place at the Sufi shrine to Mohammad Ali Gujjar in Punjab province. Victims were apparently given intoxicants before being killed, and some of the bodies were naked.
The motive for the attack was unclear but some officials said the chief suspect had mental health problems and had acted violently towards his followers previously.
Two women and as many men managed to escape, in an injured condition, from the shrine. One of them reported the crime to locals who then informed the police. The injured have been shifted to hospital where their condition is stated to be critical.
“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,” the 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 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: “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 two and a half years ago. Waheed – a one-time 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 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 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.
The 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 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
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