[ad_1]
The police in central Assam’s Karbi Anglong district have arrested 9 folks, together with three ladies, for killing two individuals after branding them witches.
Police mentioned a homicide case was registered below the Indian Penal Code and the Assam Witch Hunting (Prohibition, Prevention and Protection) Act towards the 9 who confessed to the killing.
The incident occurred in Rahimapur, an Adivasi village about 80 km from district headquarters Diphu on September 30.
“A 50-year-old woman and an unrelated 28-year-old man were killed and cremated together after a kangaroo court was held in the courtyard of the village headman and held them responsible for the death of a girl on September 27,” the district’s Superintendent of Police Debojit Deuri instructed The Hindu.
The two had been accused of practising black magic that made the woman fall sick and die.
(*2*) Mr Deuri mentioned.
An area police officer, recounting the confessional statements, mentioned the 2 had been bludgeoned to loss of life earlier than being cremated. Remains of their our bodies recovered from the pyre have been collected for forensic check.
Social malaise
Witch-hunting has been an age-old social malaise in Assam, largely reported from the western a part of the State. Data introduced in the State Assembly mentioned witch-hunting claimed the lives of 107 folks from 2011 to November 2019.
The Assam police had in 2001 launched Project Prahari to counsel sure communities towards practising with-hunting. The initiative by former Director-General of Police Kuladhar Saikia adopted the killing of 5 folks after they had been labelled “witches” in Kokrajhar district’s Thaigarguri village.
Karbi Anglong district has not been as infamous for witch-hunting however has recorded a number of situations of mob-lynching in latest years. The most notorious amongst them was the killing of two adventure-loving Assamese associates – Goa-based sound engineer Nilotpal Das and Guwahati-based businessman Abhijeet Nath – on June 8, 2018.
On February 28, a courtroom in Diphu awarded life imprisonment to 12 folks for lynching 16-year-old Jhankar Saikia on July 1, 2013, following a tiff over an auto-rickshaw charging ₹10 greater than the conventional fare.
[ad_2]