



In a bizarre case straight out of the Hollywood supernatural horror film Insidious, a pre-schooler was allegedly abducted and murdered by ‘djinns’ in a backward area of Gilgit-Baltistan. The local police have registered a case and investigations are under way.





Four-year-old Ahmad had gone missing nearly two weeks ago from Somal village of Chilas, a town in Diamer Valley of G-B. And his mutilated body pockmarked with wounds was found dumped in a nearby forest.Ahmad was reportedly possessed by a female genie who was enamoured with him. Ahmad’s mother left her house to fetch water from a nearby spring – and Ahmad also trudged along. However, he mysteriously went missing from the spring. Ahmad’s mother looked for him, but in vain. She returned home and narrated the story to the family.The family combed the entire village in search of Ahmad but found no trace. The family then decided to seek help from Aamils (exorcists) instead of the police. They approached a Rawalpindi-based exorcist, Qari Mazoorul Haq, who travelled all the way to Chilas to resolve the mystery. “After speaking to Ahmad’s mother and local clerics, the exorcist confirmed that the pre-schooler has been seized by some malevolent entity,” a relative told. “Only Aamils could exorcise the djinn out of the boy and save him – and we tried that,” he added.Qari Haq started his exorcism rituals with the help of three local residents which continued for nearly a week. “During the ritual, the boy briefly reappeared twice,” an investigator Mujeebur Rahman told journalists in Chilas on Saturday.“Ahmad’s parents told us that the djinns briefly produced him twice and then disappeared,” he added. “However, the exorcist’s ritual enraged the djinns who subsequently killed Ahmad in retaliation and threw his body in the jungle.”Ahmad was laid to rest on Friday. The local cleric asked the mourners at the funeral to recite more and more verses from the Holy Quran to save themselves from the mischief of paranormal forces. In his Friday sermon too, the cleric urged the worshippers to seek God’s forgiveness against the wrath of djinns.Initially, the local police was reluctant to register an FIR but relented after local police chief Capt (retd) Zafar Iqbal Awan directed them to lodge a case. “We will solve the mystery,” Awan told reporters on Sunday. “Ahmad’s relatives still believe it was the handiwork of supernatural forces but we will investigate all possible angles to bring the culprits to justice.”Published in The Express Tribune, October 5, 2015.