Saudi Islamic police arrested an Indian barber for extorting money from customers through witchcraft although he denied the charge, a newspaper in the oil-rich Gulf country said on Tuesday.
A 24-year-old Saudi man who had suffered from stomach pains and change in behavior was taken by his family to a Raqi (healer by Koran), who decided that the man was under a magic spell.
After treatment sessions of nearly four months, the Saudi was cured and his family reported his case to the feared Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
The man told Commission members that he had paid SRT200 to the 37-year-old Indian barber in the central town of Makkah in return for “strange juice and herbs” to make him feel better.
“One of the Commission members, posing as a customer, went to the barber and told him he was not feeling well,” Sabq daily said.
“The barber took him inside a room and tried to give him herbs and talismans…at that moment other members stormed in and arrested the barber for witchcraft…but he told them that he was only applying the Buddhist treatment technique which he had learned in India.”
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