JAIPUR: In a bizarre incident, the Jodhpur Police arrested two men on Friday night who were allegedly trying to rescue the spirit of a child from their family who had died at the city’s famous MDM Hospital.
Armed with two swords, a Diya [ Jyot] and some lemons in their hands the men were trying to enter the Trauma Ward of the hospital in order to rescue the 'aatma' or spirit of the child who had died in the same ward two years ago.
As the two superstitious men walked from the parking lot towards the ward with swords in their hands, it created a storm in the hospital. Finally, the men were stopped by Sher Singh, a guard on duty at the Trauma Ward who quickly called in the local police to the hospital.
After initial interrogation by the police, the two men revealed that on the advice of a tantrik, they had come to save the spirit of a relative child -Anil Ram who had died in the ward. Since the child’s death, their family was facing a host of difficulties with many members facing serious illnesses in the past two years.
During this period, the family came under the influence of a local tantrik. Recently, the tantrik told them that the problems for the family emanated from the spirit of the child who had died at the hospital and its only when the child’s spirit is liberated and brought home that they would see better times.
Ultimately, on Friday night they came with swords and lemons to the hospital to perform a Tantrik activity at the Trauma Ward to liberate the child’s soul. However, the alert guard caught them and handed them to the police. In the commotion, two other men who had come to support the two arrested men ran away from the hospital.
"Anil Ram from our family had met with an accident and died in this Hospital. A local tantrik told us to put a lemon, sindoor on the sword in the Trauma ward where the child had died but the security guard nabbed us before we could perform the same," said one of the accused Bhupat Ram.
The SHO of the Shastri Nagar Police station in Jodhpur, Raj Singh Rajpurohit confirmed that "the two men named Bhanwar Lal and Bhupat Ram have been arrested and a case has been registered under the Arms Act. Besides these two, there were two other men who have escaped and we are now trying to catch them".
This peculiar and weird incident once again highlights how superstitions, witch-craft and other irrational beliefs continue to exert a strong hold on the lives of people especially in rural Rajasthan. While this is lucrative business for quacks and tantrik babas, such superstitious beliefs dupe a lot of innocent people of their money and sanity.