In yet another incident based on superstitious belief, a Jharkhand woman was allegedly killed by a mob on Saturday on rumours that she chopped off a local girl’s braid.
Residents of Radhanagar, a village in Shahibganj district attacked a group of four beggars including a woman and a nine year old boy suspecting their involvement in braid chopping of a girl. They pelted stones at the woman, who was said to be in her 40s, on suspicion that she was practising black magic. police said. The boy is critically injured.
“We have beefed up security in the area. For now, superstition seems to be the cause of the attack, we are still investigating,” said Sahibganj superintendent of police P Murugan told Hindustan Times. By the time the victims were rushed to the hospital, the woman was dead.
Earlier on August 2, an elderly Dalit woman was allegedly beaten to death by two men in Agra’s Mutani after villagers suspected that she was out to cut the hair of sleeping women. Two days later, another woman was attacked by villagers of Dhamenda in Agra district as they assumed her to be witch, but fortunately was rescued by police.
Hundreds of reports of women’s hair being mysteriously chopped off is doing rounds in Delhi, Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab since June.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Jharkhand has witnessed the maximum incidences of witch-hunting in India in the past five years. Here, occultists and sorcerers often call the shots in the hinterland and over 15,000 women have fallen prey to superstition-triggered attacks by now in the state, say activists. The state registered 32 murders related to witch hunting, which was highest in the country in 2015, revealed NCRB data.
Source: Hindustan Times
