Pakistani Father Accuses Sorceror of Beheading his Daughters
Devastated over the mysterious murder of two of his infant daughters in a single week, 35-year-old bus driver Mohammad Ismail is currently under intense pressure from a local influential person to drop murder charges against a sorcerer, whom Ismail accused of both murders.
Ismail said the head of his five-year old daughter, Shakira, was found four days after she went missing on January 24 from a deserted karez [underground water channel].
However, the girl’s body is still missing. While the family was trying to find the culprits who beheaded Shakira, another daughter of Ismail, three-and-half-year old Sadia went missing. She was also killed and her body thrown in a karez.
“It was raining on January 24 when my daughter Shakira Bibi, the third of my children, went missing at around evening prayers time,” Ismail told Daily Times. “We kept on looking for her in almost every house in the neighbourhood but to no success.” As the hunt continued for Shakira for four regular days, some local children, who were playing in the neighborhood, found a shoe of Shakira.
Shah Jahan, 20, a cousin of Shakira, began to search for the missing girl inside the karez.
“After around one hour’s search, my feet hit a human head. When I picked it up, it was Shakira’s. The remaining part of her body was missing,” he said. Shah Jahan also found pieces of her clothes from the place.
Though a case was registered with Satellite Town Police Station on January 25, progress could only be made once Shakira’s family hired the services of detectives from Okara for Rs 95,000. The detectives used a dog that led to the sorcerer.
The sorcerer, Yar Muhammad, had rented a house adjacent to that of the slain sisters. Muhammad fled as soon as Shakira’s head was found.
A raid on the premises found several burnt human bones, skulls, female hair and human blood in bottles, eyewitnesses said.
The sorcerer was famous for offering amulets for success in life in return for huge amounts of money.
The girls’ father, Ismail, said he was ‘10