Ranchi. Chutni Devi remembers very well the date of 3rd September 1995. On this day, when the pain of the atrocities committed by the Panchayat sitting in the village, even today, when it rises in his chest, the wounds turn green once again. His eyes start flowing. The neighbor’s daughter was ill and the crime was blamed on her forehead, saying that you are a witch. You want to kill the child by doing magic.
The panchayat imposed a fine of five hundred rupees on him. Due to the fear of the bullies, Chutni Devi paid the fine. But the sick girl did not recover even the next day, so on September 4, forty-fifty people raided her house together. Took them out. Clothes were pulled from his body. was brutally beaten. Not only this, even excreta and urine were thrown at them. After this incident, it became difficult for him to live in the village. Even her husband left her. If she had not run away from the village with her three children overnight, I don’t know whether she would have been alive today or not!
This story is of Chutni Devi, a resident of Birbans village in Seraikela-Kharsanwa district of Jharkhand, who received the Padma Shri at the hands of the President of India in November last year. The Chutni Devi you will meet today is identified as such a ‘Veerangana’, who not only fought for herself to erase the identity of the ‘witch’, was harassed all over Jharkhand as ‘witch-bhootni’. Took women out of a life like hell.
But, the question is, since the kind of atrocities that Chutni Devi suffered 27 years ago, how dark is the superstition of witch, ghost, exorcist, tantra-mantra, black magic in Jharkhand? Responding to this, Chutni Devi herself says – Even today in the name of witch, atrocities have not stopped in many areas of Jharkhand. The reason for this is not only superstition. Behind such incidents, there are conspiracies ranging from cultivating mutual enmity to grabbing property.
Recent events also show how deeply the roots of this evil practice have been entrenched in the land of Jharkhand. On September 3, in Ranadih village of Sonahatu police station area, just 50 km from Jharkhand’s capital Ranchi, the people of the village killed three women together by calling them witches. In this village, two youths of the village were bitten by a snake in two days and for this these three women were held guilty. The shocking thing is that a woman’s own son was also in the crowd of those who killed these women by accusing them of witchcraft.
On the night of September 24, the dabangs of Aswari village of Saraiyahat block, under the sub-capital of Dumka, forced four people, including three women of a family, to drink excreta and urine by pretending to be witch-exorcists and fired them with hot iron rods. The harassed people were in pain all night for hours, but they could neither muster the courage to go to the police nor tell anyone about it. Later, when the police somehow got information about the incident, they were admitted to the hospital. Before this incident, a panchayat was sitting in the village, which said that the cattle and children of the village were getting sick due to the witchcraft of Srilal Murmu of the village and the women of his house. After this, about a dozen people armed with sticks and weapons attacked his house. Similarly, on October 8, a 65-year-old woman was hacked to death with a sharp weapon in Tupudana, Ranchi.
In the last nine months of the year 2022, there have been more than two dozen murders in the name of witchcraft, tantra-mantra and magic. 95 percent of those killed are women. In the last seven years, in the name of witch-bisahi, an average of 35 murders have taken place in Jharkhand every year. According to the Crime Research Department (CID) data, 46 people were murdered in 2015 posing as witches. There were 39 murders in 2016, 42 in 2017, 25 in 2018, 27 in 2019, 28 in 2020 and 22 in 2021. So far this year there have been 26 murders in the name of witches. In this way the figure for seven and a half years is more than 250 in total.
Talking about the cases of harassment by telling witches, from 2015 to 2020, a total of 4,556 cases were registered in the police. The figures for 2021 and 2022 are not officially available, but it is estimated that more than 5000 cases of witch violence have been registered with the police since 2015. If we calculate, every day two to three cases reach the police. After the formation of a separate state of Jharkhand on 15 November 2000, till now, more than 1050 murders have taken place in the name of witchcraft and tantra-mantra.
Chandoshri, associated with social and voluntary organizations, says that superstition and illiteracy are behind the witch malpractice, sometimes such conspiracies are hatched against them to grab the property of widows and helpless women. In the village, women are called witches for the disease, death of someone, even the death of animals and drying of trees.
Yogendra Yadav, an advocate of the Jharkhand High Court and associated with many social organizations, says that about 30 to 40 percent cases of witch torture do not reach the police. Due to the fear and localization of the oppressors, many people remain silent even after suffering atrocities. Most of them are women. Sometimes the harassers are people from their own household. Such cases reach the police only when atrocities are expected.
Yogendra explains that for the incidents of torture in the name of witch-bisahi, the Prohibition of Witch Practices Act was implemented in the year 2001, but after the formation of Jharkhand, the increasing cases of witch torture and violence show that the law should be reviewed afresh. needed. There is a need to make the rules of punishment stricter, fast track courts to take quick decisions in such cases and intensify the awareness campaign at the social level.
Here the state government has its own claims regarding the government’s efforts against the witch system. It has been claimed in the portal of the Chief Minister of Jharkhand that Garima Project is being run to declare Jharkhand free from witchcraft and its branding. In the first phase, this scheme is going on in 342 gram panchayats of 25 blocks of seven districts. Under this, awareness campaigns for the eradication of witchcraft and identification of the victim or her family are to be benefited. For this, Garima Centers and Call Centers have been set up. (IANS)
