SAHIWAL: The police have arrested a self-acclaimed faith healer who inflicted burns on a 13-year-old girl on the pretext of ridding her of ‘possession’.
The police also registered a case against Sarfraz Jutt, a resident of 167/9-L, Ghaziabad, on the compliant of girl’s father Amanullah.
On March 15 last, labourer Amanullah and his wife took their ailing daughter ‘M’ to Sarfraz Jutt who claimed the girl was under the possession of evil spirit. He convinced her poor parents to have the girl cured by walking barefoot on burning coal.
Accordingly, Sarfraz made the girl walk on the burning coal (on March 19) and her parents rescued her the moment she started screaming with pain.
An eyewitness claimed the girl’s parents asked the ‘faith healer’ to leave their place only after she wept bitterly.
A relative of the girl recently visited the family and took her to a doctor who diagnosed typhoid. It was on her insistence the girl’s father submitted an application to SHO Muhammad Zaman.
District Police Officer Syed Khurram Ali told Dawn that the girl’s parents brought the matter to the police notice on Tuesday afternoon and a Ghaziabad police team arrested the fake healer soon afterwards.
Sub-inspector Muhammad Yar, the investigation officer, confirmed arrest of Sarfraz Jutt against whom the police registered a case 102/14 under Section 324 of the PPC. Meanwhile, the police shifted the girl to Chichawtani’s Tehsil Headquarters Hospital for treatment of typhoid and burns.
This correspondence visited the girl in hospital and found that she was unable to stand on her own feet because of burns.
It is learnt that SP Syed Mukhtar Bukhari gave Rs5,000 to the patient’s parents and promised her free treatment.