Islamabad: A shrine custodian in Pakistan’s Sargodha district tortured and murdered at least 20 people, including four women, police said.
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 that they had come to kill him,” regional police chief Zulfiqar Hameed said.
Deputy commissioner Liaquat Ali Chatta said Abdul and his accomplices gave intoxicated food to 22 people and later murdered them with daggers and sticks.
A local government official said Abdul had told police the saint buried at the shrine had been poisoned and he feared his victims might kill him also.
“Local people say Abdul used to beat the visitors who came to him for treatment of various physical or spiritual ailments,” Local rescue service official Mazhar Shah said. “Sometimes he would remove the clothes of his visitors and burn them.”
Two people, one of them a woman, managed to escape Abdul and reached district hospital. Both had suffered injuries. The woman reported the incident to the authorities after which heavy contingent of police rushed to the scene.
