Police in Pakistan have confirmed the arrest of a shrine custodian and two others for allegedly murdering twenty devotees in the country’s Punjab province.
Local Police officer Shaukat Manzor told newsmen that Abdul Waheed, a custodian of the Muhammad Gujjar shrine drugged the victims before beating them with sticks,stabbing them to death and handing himself in.
There were no survivors in the incident which occurred in the tiny village of Chak, 160km West of Lahore outside the city of Sarghoda.
Speaking with journalists a doctor at a Sarghoda hospital Pervaiz Haider indicates that he observed that a good number of the murdered faithfuls were badly stabbed behind their necks.
“There were bruises and wounds inflicted by a club and dagger on the bodies of the victims” he said.
Local Police Chief Shamsher Khan said the police found Waheed seated outside the shrine at the crime scene with “a dagger dripping with blood on him. He told us not to come near otherwise he will attack us…But we managed to arrest him and two other men sitting outside the shrine with him”.
“The whole shrine was filled with bodies.There were 20 dead bodies,including three women and 17 men” he added.
The police are uncertain about possible links with armed extremist organisations who are often responsible for attacking shrines and Pakistani minorities.
In the meantime officials have hinted at filing terrorism charges after interviewing the suspects and probable witnesses.
Saturday’s attack is the worst in Pakistan since the 2014 attack on a school in Penshaw by the Islamic state of Iraq and Levant.
Kehinde Pase
Lagos
