Maldives probes 'doctor' who claims to heal the deaf
According to foreign media reports, the man, who was deported from Saudi Arabia on charges of fraud, has also been arrested in Turkey.
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Mohamed Muzayyin Nazim
A foreigner, who claimed to heal hearing and vision impairment immediately, had arrived in the Maldives and the people he had treated had brought the issue to the attention of the Health Ministry, after which a probe has begun into the matter, but the man had already left the country.
The man, who uses social media in the name of Mala Ali Mahmud, has posted videos on TikTok of what he claims to have treated hearing-impaired children using Quranic verses in a local island. The videos, which are doing the rounds among the locals, have prompted some to allege that he is practicing sorcery. A section of religious leaders have asked people to be careful about him.
Aishath Shathufa Shafiu, director of communications at the Ministry of Health, told Atoll Times this evening that the matter has been brought to the ministry's attention and is now being looked into.
"It's not someone the ministry knows. He had left the country five days ago. He had come on a tourist visa," she said.
Shathufa said it was not immediately clear to which islands the man had gone to and that efforts were on to trace those who claimed to have treated him.
In the videos, he can be seen holding the children’s neck tightly and shaking them as well as putting his finger into their mouths, all in the name of healingthe hearing impaired children.
According to some foreign news reports, he is an Iraqi Kurd, a Mullah and identified as Ali Kalak, also popularly known as Mala Ali Kurdistani, according to Rudaw, an Iraqi Kurdish newspaper, in 2020.
The man was arrested in early 2020 after he left Iraq for Saudi Arabia and showed that he had treated and cured a blind man. According to media reports, the man, who was deported from Saudi Arabia on charges of fraud, has also been arrested in Turkey.
According to reports, he later went to Pakistan. A lot of people in the country were seeking his services on the assumption that he was treating and healing disabilities as well as other health problems, according to Pakistani media reports.
