FAISALABAD: When Muhammad Naveed Qamar, a resident of Ghulam Muhammadabad, fell ill a few months ago, his family took him to Pir Liaquat, who described himself as a spiritual healer, in the neighbourhood.
The pir told the family that Qamar was possessed. They were told that Qamar, general store owner, needed “spiritual healing” to resume a normal life.
“My family were frightened and were ready to do anything to get rid of ‘the influence of the djin’,” he said.
The family paid the pir Rs15,000 and presented him a black goat for the “exorcism”. Over the next few days, he said, the pir kept the patient at his dera, beat him and fed him strange-tasting potions to “evict the demon”.
It was after three days that Qamar was rescued by a relative, Gulzar Ali, who went to visit him at the dera.
The pir fled. Ali took Qamar to the district headquarters hospital, where doctors treating him said that both his legs had been paralysed from the beating and the potions had caused him ulcers.
Qamar shares his story with hundreds of thousands of people in the province who are exploited by illegal medical practitioners and fake pirs.
According to the Punjab Healthcare Commission, there are 200,000 quacks and fake healers in the province. In Faisalabad alone, there are over 2,000 quacks advertising their businesses on the city’s major roads.
The number of pirs, the commission suggests, is on the rise.
In a press conference earlier this week, HCP Chief Executive Dr Ajmal said that most of the quacks presented themselves as doctors.
He regretted the fact that Pakistan did not have an anti-quackery law. He said the commission only had the power to order closure of quacks’ clinics.
Answering a question on why people still visited them knowing that these practitioners were illegal, he said widespread poverty and illiteracy allowed quacks to thrive.
Police spokesman Aamir Waheed told The Express Tribune that police always acted against quacks once there was a complaint against them. He said the police did not have the authority to raid clinics.
He said several quacks, including pirs, had been arrested from Faisalabad in August.
One of them, indentified as Azhar Shami alias Mitho Shah, had tried to rape a woman, who was seeking treatment for her depression. Another man claiming to be a doctor had performed a surgery leading to internal infection that ended the patient at a hospital in critical condition for more than two weeks.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 9th, 2013.