Cannibals in Pakistan: Part 3 (recent developments)

 

New details have been unearthed concerning the case of the ‘Cannibal Brothers' in Pakistan. 

A little background to understand the story: Pakistani police had arrested two middle-aged brothers, Mohammad Arif and Mohammad Farman, on suspicion of stealing and eating the flesh of 24-year-old cancer patient, Saira Perveen. The two brothers are said to have cut a foot and part of a knee from the body and cook the flesh in a steel pot. Some of the gruesome dish had already been devoured when police raided the brothers' home in a remote part of Punjab. (The videos below may contain graphic scenes. Watch at your own discretion)

The culprits have confessed to eating human flesh since a decade. One brother claimed that the delicious dishes were made from the flesh of human beings, and that they could only procure this meat from dead corpses. Otherwise, “we have to kill them and then eat them.” While, the other brother found all this amusing and casually said that he thought he was being fed goat’s meat and had no clue it was human flesh.

When the police raided their house they found that, “they (the brothers) had managed to remove the flesh from the leg. Under interrogation, Arif revealed that they had eaten some of the flesh and stored the rest for dinner.”

According to the investigators, Arif and Farman had eaten parts of almost 150 bodies that they had excavated from the graveyard. The number, others speculate, could be up to 250.

Not only this, the brothers had taken out the limbs of children from graves and eaten them, and had also eaten stray cats and dogs when nothing else sufficed. They allegedly ate the shrouds after writing religious verses on them, in what seems to be a black magic ritual. While it was difficult for them to digest bones, they used chemicals to metabolize and dissolve the bones and tough parts of the body. They have also revealed to the police that they also ate their own flesh in small amounts, as well as their own hair.

It seems that Saira Perveen was not the only one who was the victim. They had been doing so as an act of revenge against women when their mother passed away and their wives left them. Farman’s wife, Rashida, left him a day after their marriage, and then divorced him, while, his brother, Arif, was married to Iffat seven years ago. She left Arif and took her two children with her. They had lost two other children less than a month after their birth. According to the mother, the children were severely ill and were killed by their own father and uncle who confessed that they cooked and ate them too. Their bodies were never found.

There were more victims…According to a neighbor, their sister, Saira, who was mentally disturbed, was gang-raped and became pregnant. Just before giving birth to her child, the brothers allegedly killed and ate her. Her body was never found either.

While it was Saira Parveen family that first raised the alarm over the missing body, locals now claim they always had their suspicions, more so because there were no burials for Arif’s two children, and that another six-month old baby’s body had gone missing from the graveyard. They never reported this to the police because later they were threatened by the brothers.

Ghulam Habib, the caretaker of the graveyard, since 30 years, admitted that he too suspected the two brothers when he, repeatedly, saw them entering the graveyard at odd hours, carrying a spade and other tools. He could not expose them because they had threatened to kill him as well.

They locals claimed that the brothers “never spoke to anyone, but just kept to themselves for the last four years. We had heard they used drugs, but there was never any indication that they indulged in these activities… they never really bothered anyone.”

The brothers reportedly believed that by consuming human flesh, they would gain the powers of Satan and become immortal, invisible and all-powerful which is apparently a belief of black magic.

The local police officer, Abdul Rehman, says that this is the “worst case of my life”.

Residents now fear that the bodies of their loved ones may have already gone into the cannibals’ cooking pot.