Kanjia Maraitoli village under Mandar police station in Ranchi district is numb with the killing of five women.All five victims who were allegedly killed by villagers last night were witches,said the police.
As per the Oxford dictionary, a witch is a person who practices witchcraft. “The stereotypical witches are commonly portrayed as wicked old women who have wrinkled skin, pimples, and pointy hats. They wear clothes that are black or purple. They also have warts on their noses and sometimes long claw-like fingernails”,states wikipedia.
The police said that all the five women who were lynched by the residents of Kanjia maraitoli on Friday-Saturday night were in the line of fire for quite some time,said the police.”The villagers suspected them to be practicing witchcraft.”
Though the police had filed the FIR,the killers were identified,the said the police.”A group of villagers used lathis and sharp edged weapons to kill them in the night”,said Ranchi SP (Rural) Raj Kumar Lakra.
Incidentally,the death of women due to the supertitous belief of the people about witchcraft is not an isolated case.”Jharkhand accounted for 54 out of 160 cases of murders where women were branded witches and killed in 2013 and a total of 400 women have been murdered with the same motive since 2001 in India”,said a report of the Indian Express.
Condemning the crime,Jharkhand Chief Minister raghubar Das said. “In the age of science and knowledge, this incident is schoking. The society must end this barbaric crime.”
