“They blamed the women for misfortune in the village and alleged it was their fault that many people here were falling ill”, local police inspector Bandana Bakhla said.
Advertisement
Jharkhand State Women’s Commission today condemned the killing of five women by locals at Kanjia village in the district for allegedly practising “witchcraft” and pitched for a strong policy for women to stop such incidents. Condemning the incident, she said soon after she took over as the head of the JSWC, two years ago, the commission speeded up shaping the “pending policy for women” but it could not be enacted due to election model code of conduct in 2014. “Then the villagers, mostly youth, dragged them all to one spot and beat them to death with sticks”.
Killings in the name of witchcraft are common in Jharkhand, said a report published on Times of India.
The National Crime Records Bureau has estimated 2,097 such murders between 2000 and 2012 in the country.
Five women, belonging to different families was killed on suspicions of being witches (‘Dayan’) by the people of same locality Friday midnight. The state government figure, meanwhile, say that between 2011 and 2013, more than 400 people were killed and 2854 of such cases registered.
Advertisement
An anti-witchcraft law has been implemented since 2001 in Jharkhand but according the human rights activists much has not been done to make the law effective.
