Karachi: Police gunned down a man, accused of strangulating his five children in southern Pakistan, after an alleged attempt to escape from police custody an hour after his arrest.
Senior police officer Amjad Shaikh said Ali Nawaz Leghari, the father of six, was in hiding after allegedly strangling five of his children in the belief he would gain magical powers.
Leghari, 40, killed the two girls and three boys aged between three and 13 years in a village in Matiari district some 140 miles north of Karachi.
Shaikh said that Leghari was arrested from Tando Allahyar and was being brought to Hala police station to be locked up there. In a sudden dramatic move, Leghari snatched the gun of a police constable and attacked the police with gunfire while trying to escape.
In retaliatory firing, the police claimed, Leghari was killed.
The man apparently believed the sacrifice would endow him with magical powers including alchemy to turn ordinary metals into silver or gold, or the possibility of eternal youth.
It was also said the man’s financial condition was bad and that he was learning black magic and that he had made the sacrifice to excel in his craft.
Leghari killed his children while he was on a 40-day spiritual journey or ‘chilla’ as it is called locally, on the instruction of his spiritual saint.
Black magic is practised in rural parts of the country, including the impoverished province where the killings took place.
