In a horrific slaying spree, a deranged man killed all but one member of his family in a small village of Mirpurkhas district to “dedicate his life to spiritual awakening”.
Khushi Muhammad Lashari, 35, allegedly strangled to death his wife, two sons – Abdul Karim, 8, and Aaqib, 2 – and two daughters – Sabahi, 10, and Iza, 6, – while they were sleeping at their home in Mehboob Farm village on Friday.
His third son, Rizwan Lashari, 9, escaped his father’s killing rampage because he was sleeping with his grandmother in a separate room.
Khushi Muhammad’s father-in-law, Aalam Lashari, lodged a complaint with the Taluka police station. A local court in Mirpurkhas sent the alleged killer on judicial remand on Saturday.
Khushi Muhammad, who has confessed to his crime, said he wanted to become a mystic and spend the rest of his life serving pilgrims at the shrine of his spiritual mentor Bhooral Shah. “Someone appearing in my dream told me that I could become a mystic if I got rid of my family,” Lashari told the media in the police lock-up.
Khushi Muhammad tilled the farmland of local landowner Saeed Lashari. He’s believed to be deranged. And of late, he was having strange hallucinations. “He was a hardworking man – but some time back he became a drug addict,” the landowner told The Express Tribune.
Villagers, on the other hand, claimed that Khushi Muhammad was a hedonist; a footloose who craved a life of pleasure.
“Once he advised his brother to kill his wife and children to rid himself of family responsibilities,” a member of the gobsmacked Lashari family told The Express Tribune requesting anonymity.
His morbid advice alarmed the family which spent most of the time at home looking after his wife and children.
Farooq Jamali, the senior superintendent of police, said that sometimes mentally sound criminals also pretend to be deranged to escape harsh punishment for their crimes.
“Khushi Muhammad will be examined to determine his mental health,” SSP Jamali told journalists. The family resisted when the police showed up to take the bodies for post-mortem, according to local journalists.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 1st, 2012.
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