Īnd yet, I think our community is inundated with these rituals. The Sikh will not believe in castes, untouchability, magic, omens, amulets, astrology, appeasement rituals, ceremonial hair cutting, fasts, frontal masks, sacred thread, graves and traditional death rites. One of the tenets of Sikhi is that we don’t believe in black magic and don’t partake in unnecessary rituals: The story is not at all surprising… and yet it baffles me.
Bhullar accepted and gave up his entire savings to Ashrafi who subsequently fled the country. The catch was that in order for Bhullar to hit the jackpot, Ashrafi would have to perform a prayer ceremony and to do so, he needed $210,000.
After cracking the eggs open, Ashrafi claimed to have “found” a piece of foil in the yolk with lottery numbers on it. I’m coming out front because I want him to get caught so he can’t rob anyone else,” says Bhullar, 42, who went to Ashrafi for help with marital and business problems after hearing a Punjabi radio show ad.Īshrafi told Bhullar that his problems were the result of someone’s black magic and told him to return with a dozen eggs. Though it sounds far-fetched, Roshanbhai – real name Mohammad Umar Ashrafi, 43 – left dozens of people in the Greater Toronto Area, all members of the Sikh community, embarrassed and broke.Īdmitting to being duped out of $105,000 is not easy for Paramjit Bhullar, owner of a Toronto trucking firm. I don’t know why, but I continued to read the article, all the while thinking, “who could fall for something like this?” And then I came across this sentence, The catch was that these individuals would first have to invest in a “special ceremony” (I guess this is where the egg yolks come in) and pay large amounts of money – in some cases over $100,000 (this is where I chuckled). “Roshanbhai”, a self-proclaimed swami was able to convince people he was a spiritual healer who could fix their family, health and business problems….and of course help them win the lottery. (Yes, I had to re-read that sentence too). A recent news article from Toronto describes how a scam artist beguiled dozens of people out of $3 million by appearing to pull winning lottery numbers out of egg yolks. This story made me chuckle when I first read it.