The conmen who rob hundreds every day

Down to his last penny, cursed with rejection and desperate for employment, when Kamran chanced upon a peculiar-looking wall chalking on his way back from an unsuccessful interview, he couldn’t see it as anything but divine intervention. Something he had been praying for, for a long time.

Beyond a mountain of trash, a few metres from the minibus window he was poking his head out of, stood a freshly painted wall. The words on it pierced through the troubled man’s soul, promising to do away with all his worries at the press of a button. He was sold.

Kamran tried to swiftly note down the number highlighted on the sidewalk wall, but the traffic signal hit green before he could place the last few digits. “I thought I’d lost my chance and I’d forgotten about it, but it was only so long before a social media advertisement promising exactly the same thing caught my eye. Except for this time, I could instantly hit the call button,” said the man who was convinced that it was the universe coming to his aid.

The ensuing phone call linked Kamran to someone based out of a small city in the province of Punjab. “His voice was a little nasal, but somehow still quite reassuring. He claimed to be an Aamil and promised that he would perform a powerful ritual that would solve all my financial issues in a week’s time. The only problem was that I did not have the Rs7,000 that he said it would cost to perform the ritual,” told Kamran.

Thinking that this was his one chance to fix everything in his life, Kamran entertained the Aamil, as he mulled the idea of taking out a small loan. He thought he’d easily pay it back once the money starts raining in a week’s time. “I took the loan, paid the disembodied voice on the phone, waited for my troubles to vanish into thin air and my bank accounts to miraculously fill up. A week turned into a few weeks and then a month, but my situation only continued to worsen and I was told that the curses placed on me were too severe and would require an even more powerful ritual, that would, of course, cost more money,” he recalled.

In retrospect, Kamran said that he would have easily drawn more loans and burned another few thousand rupees trying to magically fix his life, if it wasn’t for his mother’s intervention. “She was very angry when she learned about where I had been spending all the money that I didn’t have,” he said, adding that his mother instead advised him to seek refuge with God, who he believes has since helped him regain control of his life.

Read: How faith healers prey on the most vulnerable

When Kamran, now a happily employed man, narrates his story to his friends and family as a way of cautioning them of those claiming to be faith healers, he can tell that his audience is quick to disassociate from his experience. “Quite frankly, I do too. In retrospect, I don’t understand how I fell for it, but that is the thing about these quacks, they have a way of luring you in at your weakest moment. We all think that It-couldn’t-be-be but then how is it that these quacks continue to make bank on people’s struggles?” the man expressed.

The provincial government however acknowledges that this is not just one man’s struggle, but rather an organised mafia that preys on hundreds and thousands of vulnerable people daily, scamming them out of pocket and often leading to deadly and damaging circumstances.

This realision had pushed the government to launch a crack-down on what it calls fake Aaamils, but although the active raids have kept them from chalking more walls, their advances have now become even more direct, as they lurk the convincing corners of the internet.

Where many like Kamran are led to believe that such faith-healers are among God’s holy men gifted with immense power, Maulana Syed Salman Ahmad, who is the Imam and Khatib of a local mosque, believes that any practice of magic remains impermissible in Islam. “Islam has space for spiritual healers, but not anyone can claim to be one. People should remain cautious of the quacks running around, and only pursue what the Quran allows. If someone’s ill, they should consult a doctor and seek medical aid and pray, instead of relying on these superstitious practices,” he told The Express Tribune.