A jirga in Mana Ahmadi tribal village in Punjab ordered two murder suspects and one accused of adultery to undergo the ordeal on Sunday, local police official Saeed Khan Leghari told AFP.
The three men walked the length of a 24-foot strip of burning coals and were declared innocent by the council after apparently coming through unscathed.
"At least eight people have been arrested in connection with holding the jirga in which suspects were made to walk on fire to prove their innocence," Leghari told AFP on Thursday.
Those arrested face charges of attempted murder and causing harm with fire, police said.
Local administration official Shafiullah Gondal confirmed the arrests.
Trial by fire, based on the premise that god will intervene to protect the innocent, has a history dating back thousands of years and across different cultures, though in Europe it was banned by the Church in the middle ages.
COMMENTS (13)
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This a trick trial to set the men free. It is actually not hard at all to walk on burning coal
Jia's Pakistan a lab for Islam, failed here. Is it so?
Now they have a certificate for committing adultery and rapes.
Now the Jirga members should be forced to sleep on the burning coal to prove their nobility.
@safdar:
Which one?
Our people would be giving 16th century Europe, a run for their money.
Perhaps when Khadim-e-Ala is done with his state sponsored foreign trips, he can pay attention to his province for which he was dying before elections?
This happens in our Village too, Do a Robbery, Walk on ignited coals, if unscathed then you are innocent.
Where did it happen exactly winterfell or kingslanding?
The backward thinking and behaviour in rural Pakistan no longer surprises me.
Really in the twenty-first century? When in the history has God saved the innocents from an ordeal against the laws of physics. Seems like Punjab has started a backward journey in time.
So I guess King Julian (from Madagascar) Is calling the shots here these days... damn
ET please pay attention to typing errors, above text have word god which should be GOD. thanks