The desire of many Indonesian Muslim to go on an Umrah pilgrimage to Mecca, coupled with the high cost of the trip, has led to many high-profile stories about people getting scammed with offers of cheap pilgrimage packages. Police in one East Java city believe that such a scam led to the grisly murder of two men on Sunday.
The suspect in the murder is a 59-year-old man, identified by police as M Dhofir, who was known as a dukun (a practitioner of black magic) in the city of Pasuruan.
Authorities first learned of the murder when the burned remains of two men were found near M Dhofir’s house early on Sunday morning. Shortly after, police arrested the dukun as well as his wife and one of his student, who both allegedly acted as his accomplices in the killings.
Due to his mystical occupation, many first speculated suspected that santet (black magic) was the cause of the murders. But, after interrogating the dukun, police say the actual motive was very different.
“So, the real motive of the suspect was heartache, because the victims promised Umrah but there was no clarity,” Pasuruan police chief AKBP Rizal Martomo told reporters on Monday as quoted by Detik.
According to police, one of M Dhofir’s victims, a 58-year-old identified as Sya’roni, had promised him he could get cheap Umrah travel packages that could be paid for in installments. M Dhofir not only took him up on his offer, but also got many of his followers, including his patients and students, to get in on Sya’roni’s offer as well.
Around 100 of M Dhofir’s followers allegedly gave Sya’roni money for Umrah packages, an amount totaling around IDR10 million (US$700) in the form of down payments and installments. But after handing over the money, the dukun said he got no updates about the travel packages, leading to his own followers losing their faith in him.
M Dhofir demanded a meeting with Sya’roni and on Saturday the victim came to the dukun’s house in Pasuruan. Police allege that M Dhofir planned to kill Sya’roni for lying and causing him shame.
When Sya’roni came to the house, he was accompanied by another man, an imam also named Sya’roni. He asked his wife to serve them tea, to which the dukun secretly added a potassium-based fish poison.
After the men complained of feeling nauseous, the dukun then said they might have caught something so he would give them a medicinal herbal drink to help them feel better before they left.
The two men accepted the drinks, which contained more of the poison.
Shortly after, the two men died. The dukun then asked one of his students, a man named Zainudin, to help find a car to move and dispose of the bodies. But they couldn’t find a vehicle so, in a panic, M Dhofir decided to ask his wife to go out and buy gasoline so that they could burn the bodies.
Early on Sunday morning, the bodies of the two victims were tied up, wrapped in blankets are dragged into a neighbor’s yard where they were soaked in gasoline and burned. M Dhofir, his wife and Zainudin all fled the scene but local resident soon discovered the burned bodies and alerted the police, who arrested all three suspects the same day.
M Dhofir could face up to 20 year in prison or the death penalty if found guilty of premeditated murder. Police have not yet announced what charges the two other suspects could face.
Much larger scale Umrah scams have become national news in Indonesia. A notorious case involved a travel agency called First Travel that allegedly scammed people out of billions of rupiah with their offers of cheap Umrah packages. The husband and wife behind the agency were sentenced to 20 and 18 years in jail, respectively, after their trial last year.
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