LAHORE: Multan Police on Saturday arrested five suspects, including two women, on charge of killing a faith healer in tehsil Jalalpur Pirwala for making their objectionable videos and blackmailing them.

The faith healer, Riaz Husain, of Zahir Pir Chowk, Jalalpur Pirwala, went missing on March 24 and a kidnap case was registered against unidentified persons with the City Police Station on the complaint of his son, Ghazanfar. Riaz was later found dead near Chah Yousafwala and police added murder charges in the case.

Multan City Police Officer (CPO) Sadiq Ali Dogar constituted a team to arrest the suspects involved in kidnapping and killing the faith healer.

The police team interrogated a suspect, Nadir, who had called the faith healer for getting a charm (Taveez) as he was facing some uncertain conditions. The suspect confessed to his crime of killing the faith healer along with his four accomplices, including his cousin Aamir and Jamil, Shehnaz and Asia.

The deceased was involved in blackmailing women through objectionable videos

The suspect told the investigating team that Riaz was involved in blackmailing their two female cousins. He added that the deceased was involved in black magic and recorded objectionable videos of the women on pretext of removing magic spells from them. Nadir also revealed that the faith healer was blackmailing their relatives and demanding huge amounts of money to delete the videos. He further revealed that he and his cousin Jamil planned to kill him and called him to their house where they first recovered the videos from his mobile before strangling him and throwing his body at a deserted place.

The CPO said the police also recovered the videos of the women who were being blackmailed by the faith healer.

Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2025