ISLAMABAD, July 13: A spiritual-healer and his gang tricked a woman into revealing her family assets and then robbed her of them on the outskirts of the city overnight, police said on Friday.

Cries of Ms X, a resident of Bilal Town, brought neighbours to her help who seized two members of the gang. However, three others and fake ‘pir’ escaped with the loot, worth about Rs500,000.

Shahzad Town police arrested the two gang members. They told interrogators that agents of the gang preyed on people in trouble and referred them to the gang leader for spiritual healing and counselling. The gang operated in Rawalpindi, Multan, Faisalabad cities of Punjab and in Islamabad.

Ms X, however, fell their prey when her jobless brother-in-law, Raja Faheem Ashraf, came back from a counselling session praising high the ‘spiritual powers’ of the pir sahib.

Impressed, she also visited the pir, whose sweet talk made her disclose the jewelry and other valuables at home.

When she returned home, she found to her grief that the pir and his five mureeds barged in too with her.

It was not her good sense but cries that two of the gang members  fell into the hands of police, which are now hunting for the four  who escaped - and also the friend who had referred jobless Ashraf  to the pir, now on the run.