Twenty tortured, then murdered in Pakistan Sufi shrine, says police

LAHORE

Twenty people were tortured and then murdered with clubs and knives at a Pakistani Sufi shrine, the police said on April 2, Reuters reported, in an attack purportedly carried out by the shrine’s custodian and several accomplices.

Four others were wounded during the attack on the morning of April 2 at the shrine on the edge of Sargodha, a remote town in the Punjab region.

The custodian of the shrine, Abdul Waheed, called on the worshippers to visit the shrine and then attacked them with his accomplices, said Liaqat Ali Chattha, deputy commissioner for the area.

“As they kept arriving, they were torturing and murdering them,” Chattha told Geo TV.

Pervaiz Haider, a doctor in a Sargodha hospital, said most of the dead were hit on the back of the neck.

“There are bruises and wounds inflicted by a club and dagger on the bodies of victims,” he told Reuters.

Regional police chief Zulfiqar Hameed told AFP that “the suspect appears to be paranoid and psychotic, or it could be related to rivalry for the control of shrine.”

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 told AFP.

Police arrested Waheed. During his interrogation, the custodian told police he believed his victims were out to kill him, said Zulfiqar Hameed, Regional Police Officer for Sargodha.

“Waheed told police that he killed the people because they had tried to kill him by poisoning him in the past, and again they were there to kill him,” Hameed told Reuters.