BAHAWALNAGAR: The city police on Saturday arrested a fake spiritual healer (pir) from Mcleod Ganj area for torturing and injuring a woman during an “exorcism rite” and swindling the victim’s family.
The victim’s mother, Irshad Bibi, told the police that her 26-year-old married daughter went to the fields where she fainted. She said that her daughter consulted various local doctors but they failed to diagnose the “disease”.
She told the police that her daughter’s husband, Azam, took her to a so-called spiritual healer, Khadim Hussain Shah, a resident of Subhan Shah locality of Mcleod Ganj, who immediately declared that she was possessed by evil spirits, claiming he could “exorcise” her.
She said Shah demanded Rs7,000 cash and some food items from her daughter’s husband for performing exorcism to cure his wife.
After receiving the cash and food items, she said, Shah told the husband to wait outside his house and took his wife inside a room where he allegedly subjected her to physical torture using hot iron and sticks.
On hearing the victim’s screams, her husband and others forced their entry into the room and rescued her.
The injured woman was shifted to the Mcleod Ganj Rural Health Centre (RHC) for medical treatment, while the suspect had been booked by police.
(Daily Dawn)
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