GUWAHATI: A 30-year-old woman was attacked with sharp weapons and burnt to death for allegedly practising witchcraft in Assam's Sonitpur district, a police officer said on Monday.
The victim, an Adivasi woman identified as Sangita Kapi, was a mother of three children.
The incident occurred at a village in northern Assam’s Sonitpur district on Sunday evening. The police arrested six persons, all of them residents of the same village, in connection with the incident.
Ram Kapi, husband of the deceased, told reporters the assailants swooped down on his house while his wife was cooking.
“They branded her as a witch and beat her up. I requested them to not beat her and come in the morning but they did not listen to me. I was also beaten up,” Kapi said.
“As my three children were crying on seeing us being beaten up, I went out taking them along to drop them at the house of my brother who lives nearby. When I returned, I saw my house on fire,” Kapi further alleged.
The body was later sent to Tezpur Medical College and Hospital for post-mortem. A police team visited the village to learn about the incident. The police said they were probing the case.
“The allegation is that the woman was burnt alive. We are probing the case,” a police officer said.
Witch-hunting, a social malaise, is common in parts of Assam. The killings have not stopped despite mass awareness campaigns by the state government, NGOs and individuals.
In 2017, the Gauhati High Court observed that branding a person as a witch and then, resorting to witch-hunting is a dehumanising act and one of the worst forms of human rights violations. The court had observed that the menace had to be confronted at multiple levels.
In 2018, the Assam Witch Hunting (Prohibition, Prevention and Protection) Act was enacted to provide for more effective measures to prohibit witch-hunting and prevent and protect persons from witch-hunting.
The Act says, “Whoever assaults or uses criminal force or causes assault or use of criminal force against a person accusing him/her to be a witch, resulting in his/her death, shall be punished in accordance with IPC section 302.