MULTAN: A man looking for ‘hidden treasure’ on the advice of an ‘occultist’ was buried alive late on Saturday night in a deep well he had dug in his house in the Delhi Gate area to locate the treasure.

Efforts to retrieve the body of 22-year-old Zeeshan Alam Qureshi were stopped after rescue officials said the work could not be accomplished without demolishing adjoining houses.

The family of Zeeshan informed the Rescue 1122 service when they lost track of him at about 1am.

Rescue teams reached the place but could not find a way to rescue the man or retrieve his body because the house is located in a congested area with narrow streets.

The officials were reluctant to send any rescuer down the over 30-foot-deep hole because of risks of the soft soil crumbling.

District Coordination Officer Zahid Saleem Gondal constituted a committee of residents of the area to take a decision because adjoining houses needed to be demolished to retrieve the body. One option suggested to the committee was to offer funeral prayers for the deceased without his body.

Zeeshan was living in a 1.5 marla, two-room house with his parents and two sisters.

According to police, the family had been carrying out the digging for four years after the ‘malang’ had informed them about the presence of treasure beneath their house.

Delhi Gate police registered a case under Section 322 against the parents and sisters of Zeeshan and took into custody his father Muhammad Alam Qureshi and mother.

Alam told police that they carried out digging late at night to avoid drawing attention of the neighbours.

Some neighbours told reporters that police had been called about two years ago when they came to know about the digging. At that time a police team asked the family to stop digging.