20 people murdered at Pakistan shrine: Police

Islamabad: The custodian of a Pakistani religious shrine and two accomplices have been arrested for intoxicating and murdering 20 devotees with batons and knives early on Sunday, police said.

Four women were among those killed at the Sufi shrine to Mohammad Ali in Punjab province, according to police, who said they had arrested three suspects including the custodian.

"The 50-year-old shrine custodian Abdul Waheed has confessed that he killed these people because he feared that they had come to kill him," regional police chief Zulfiqar Hameed told AFP.

"The suspect appears to be paranoid and psychotic, or it could be related to rivalry for the control of shrine," he said, adding that the investigation was continuing.

Local police station chief Shamshir Joya said the victims, whose clothes were torn and bloodstained, appeared to have been given intoxicants.

"We suspect that the victims had been given some intoxicants before they were murdered, but we will wait for a forensics report to confirm this suspicion," he added.

Joya said the shrine was built in the area some two and a half years ago. When its former custodian died, Waheed -- a one-time employee of the national election commission -- took over.

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has called for a police report on the investigation within 24 hours, a senior government official said.

Visiting shrines and offering alms for the poor -- and cash to the custodians -- remains a very popular custom in Pakistan. Many believe this will help get their prayers answered.

For centuries Pakistan was a land of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam whose wandering holy men helped spread the religion throughout the Indian subcontinent in the 13th century.

Sufis believe in saints which they say can intercede for them directly with God. They have no hierarchy or organisation, instead seeking spiritual communion through music and dance at the shrines of the saints.

Several million Muslims in Pakistan are still believed to follow Sufism, although it has overtaken in recent decades by more conservative versions of the faith.

Hardliners such as the Taliban or the Islamic State group have carried out major attacks on Sufi shrines because they consider them heretical.

In February 88 people were killed and hundreds wounded in Pakistan`s southern province of Sindh when a suicide bomber blew himself up among devotees at a ufi shrine.