“The attackers armed with machetes and
other crude implements descended on the village and took away Moni Orang
from her house and then brutally killed her. She was decapitated and
her limbs were chopped off,” a senior police official, Manabendra Dev
Roy, told AFP.
Seven people have been arrested over her
death but on Tuesday some aggrieved villagers stormed the local police
station to protest against the arrests.
“Moni was a witch and had cast evil
spells on her enemies,” said Kiran Teronpi, a man who lived in the area.
“There is no place for such sorcerers and so her killing is justified,”
he said.
The victim’s husband said his wife was ‘an innocent woman’ and accused the priests of stoking ‘suspicion and provocation’.
Belief in witchcraft and the occult
remains widespread in some impoverished and tribal-dominated areas of
India. In some cases women are stripped naked as punishment, burnt alive
or driven from their homes and killed. Some states including Jharkhand
have introduced special laws to try to curb crimes against people
accused of witchcraft.
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