A grim discovery
The grieving family of Nasreen Bibi, a 24-year-old cancer patient, may have thought they had suffered the worst when she succumbed to the disease, but their nightmare had only just begun.
The morning after her burial, her family visited the Sheikh Pir Graveyard in Kahawar Kalan to offer fateha prayers. Making their way through the 640 year old graveyard to what they thought was Nasreen’s final resting place, they noticed that the fresh grave had been disturbed. It appeared as if someone had tried to excavate it and pull something out.
Ghulam Habib, the caretaker of the graveyard, was summoned.
Habib had tended the graves for 30 years, but he was about to admit to something he had been threatened never to reveal.
He told the distraught family that he suspected two men were responsible – brothers Mohammad Arif and Mohammad Farman. Habib said he couldn’t divulge any other details, but the gateman at the nearby railway crossing may have more clues.
Bilal, the gateman, told the police he had seen Farman going towards the graveyard, carrying a spade and other tools, and while he suspected their motives, he never confronted them out of fear of retribution.
Arif and Farman were regular visitors to the graveyard, but with a macabre motive that has shocked and appalled hundreds who have heard their story: they had dug up Nasreen Bibi to eat her remains, and it seems she was not the only one who had fed their twisted appetites.
Unearthing the truth
DPO Bhakkar Humayun Masood Sindhu and local SHO Abdul Rehman who investigated the case have the same version of events, “We received a report that a corpse was missing from the graveyard. We registered a First Information Report and arrived at the scene. We followed their tracks and immediately raided the place that we believed the suspects had escaped to. When we entered the house, we found Arif. The body was hidden in the room. There were instruments there — a spade, a pick-axe, a knife and the wooden slab on which they butchered the body. At the time we arrived, they had only managed to remove the flesh from the leg. Under interrogation, Arif revealed that they had eaten some of the flesh and stored the rest to have for dinner. Farman was not there and we had to track him down.”
Villagers say the police also made use of the services of the local ‘Khoji’, a traditional village detective, to track down the suspects.
In the videotape made at the scene, a clearly disoriented Arif first tries to place all the blame on his brother, even denying that there was a partially eaten corpse under the shroud.
Under interrogation, he quickly changed his tune. The accused revealed that they had eaten corpses in the past as well. They had taken out the limbs of children from graves and eaten them, and had also eaten dogs and cats.
Now in custody, the details being revealed by Arif and Farman to the police have disgusted investigating officers, who have never heard of cannibalism in the rural areas of Punjab.
According to the investigators, Arif and Farman had eaten parts of almost 150 bodies that they had excavated from the graveyard. The number, others speculate, could be up to 250. Adding credence to this seemingly unbelievable claim is the account of the graveyard’s caretaker, who says that out of the 283 graves in the graveyard, only 3 seem undisturbed.
They also allegedly ate the shrouds after writing religious verses on them, in what seems to be a black magic ritual. They have also revealed to the police that they also ate their own flesh in small amounts, as well as their own hair. While it was difficult for them to digest bones, they used chemicals to metabolise and dissolve the bones and tough parts of the body.
Family ties
Thirty-five-year-old Farman’s wife Rashida left him a day after their marriage, and they then divorced. His brother, Arif, was married to a woman called Iffat seven years ago. She left Arif and took her two children with her.
The couple had four children, but two of them had died less than a month after their respective births.
According to Iffat, the children were severely ill and were killed by their own father and uncle. The brothers have confessed that they cooked and ate them.
One report claimed that they first ate the heads, and then the brains.
Some even speculate that the brothers’ appetite for human flesh led them to eat their own sister, Saira. According to the area’s residents, Saira — who was mentally disturbed — was allegedly gang-raped and became pregnant.
Just before she was due to deliver her child, the brothers allegedly killed her. Her body was never found; leading residents to speculate that she too, had been eaten by the cannibal brothers. Of the other sisters, Kaafia lives in Changa Manga, while Nusrat and Tahira live in Bhai Pheru and Sargodha respectively. Nusrat was in the village visiting her father at the time of the arrests, and while suspicion initially fell on her as well, she has been cleared by the police.
At first, their father Rana Khalil denied the entire story, claiming to investigators that this was a conspiracy, a ‘magical’ plot to usurp the family’s property.
Later, he changed his tune and confessed that his sons had beaten him up and tried to kill him as well, but he was saved by others in the area. Rana Khalil also admitted that his sons ate the flesh of dogs and cats as well.
According to another report, Khalil, who lives with his eldest son Rana Intizar, had bequeathed 18 acres of agricultural land to his sons so they would not be dependent on him. His wife died in 1981, leaving behind their children — Intizar, Arif, Farman and four daughters, three of whom are now married. The fourth was allegedly killed by her brothers.
Long-standing suspicions
While it was Nasreen Bibi’s family that first raised the alarm over the defiled grave of their loved one, locals now claim they always had their suspicions, more so because there were no burials for Arif’s two children, and that another six-month old baby’s body had gone missing from the graveyard.
Graveyard caretaker Ghulam Habib was unable to reveal the truth because the brothers had threatened to kill him.
“I had seen them enter the graveyard several times during odd hours with their tools – including axes,” he told The Express Tribune. “When I tried to inform the area’s residents, the brothers attacked me.”
“They threatened to kill me if I tried to expose them. I remained silent but I saw many defiled graves, many of which had no bodies.”
According to Habib, locals who discovered the truth had been threatened by the brothers as well.
One resident claimed that the brothers “never spoke to anyone, but just kept to themselves for the last four years.”
He told The Express Tribune, “We had heard they used drugs, but there was never any indication that they indulged in these activities… they never really bothered anyone.”
While no one in the village raised their voice, neither did Arif and Farman’s family.
Satanism, human flesh and halwa
This was not survival cannibalism, the brothers were not well-to-do, but they could certainly feed themselves. There appears to be a far more sinister motive to their cravings for human flesh. The brothers reportedly believed that by consuming human flesh, they would gain the powers of the Devil and become immortal, invisible and all-powerful. The fact that they got away with their sick crimes for so long must have only fed their delusions.
According to an old-time resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, this was a belief of black magicians, who had told people that eating the flesh of humans and animals gave one immense power.
Farman and Arif told The Express Tribune that they were mentally fit. They claimed that delicious dishes were made from the flesh of human beings, and that they could only procure this meat from corpses. Otherwise, “we have to kill them and then eat them.” Curiously enough, the accused claim that along with human flesh, their favourite dish is halwa from Dera Ismail Khan.
While Arif and Farman smoke hashish heavily, police officers say they appear to be in control of their faculties. One police officer expressed surprise that the cannibals seem normal in all other respects. “They even use the bathroom like normal people!” exclaimed the obviously puzzled policeman.
Fear and loathing in Bhakkar
The curious case of the cannibals has not only horrified investigators, but has also spread fear and loathing in the area. Rumours have spread in the district that the meat from the corpses was being sold in shops and restaurants. Others claim the shrouds were sold back to textile mills. SHO Abdul Rehman says that this is the “worst case of my life”.
Other residents, who fear that the bodies of their loved ones may have gone into the cannibals’ cooking pot, are planning to file an application in the court of sessions judge, Hafeezullah Khan, to get permission to exhume the bodies buried in the graveyard. While Nasreen Bibi’s family’s nightmare has only begun, the dread of their loved ones’ having been defiled is haunting the now infamous area of Kahawar Kalan.
Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, April 24th, 2011.
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