Central law needed to end killings for fear of witchcraft
Salo Devi was mercilessly beaten to death and her family members seriously injured in the dead of one June night this year. The alleged crime of the 58-year-old from Jharkhand’s Gumla district? Villagers suspected her to be a witch who had prolonged the illness of another villager’s infant daughter. A week later in Rajasthan’s Ajmer, a 22-year-old woman’s hair was chopped off and she was tortured with scorching stones, tar and charcoal by her in-laws who accused her of being a witch.
Earlier this year, Pandu Hembram and his wife Parbati, an elderly tribal couple living in West Bengal’s Sainthia police district, were killed on a similar suspicion. In March, Mamta Nishad’s in-laws made her walk twelve times on burning coal and nine times on iron nails to prove that she did not practise black magic; she was hospitalised in Chhattisgarh’s Durg town.
The National Crime Records Bureau says that during 2015-2021, 663 women were killed on suspicion of practising witchcraft—95 deaths a year. The actual number would be much higher as many cases in remote areas are not reported to the police and are handled within the community. Jharkhand alone registered 4,556 cases under the Prevention of Witch Practices Act during 2015-2020—more than two cases a day.
Our institutional response has been two-fold: awareness generation and criminalisation. The awareness efforts have been half-hearted and piecemeal. Some states have enacted laws criminalising the practice, but most of them fail to meet an adequate standard—the prescribed punishments have been lenient and there are no institutional mechanisms to quickly investigate and prosecute such cases. Some of the state laws have not deterred such cases.
In 1999, Bihar was the first state to enact a law on this, which was adopted verbatim in 2001 by Jharkhand. It has only eight sections and provides for punishments ranging from three months to a year, and a fine ranging from ₹1,000-2,000. Expressing serious concern over the law’s failure, the Jharkhand High Court initiated a case and directed the state government in August 1, 2023 to file a comprehensive report on the steps taken to contain the menace.
Odisha is no less of a hotspot for such crimes. It never enacted a law till its high court took note of activist Sashiprave Bindhani’s plea in 2012 and directed the state to introduce a bill within a year. The state’s law is almost a copy of Bihar’s. It provides for sentences of up to three years and a maximum fine of ₹5,000. The act erroneously treats witchcraft as a gender-specific offence, though many men have also been killed on the suspicion.
Chhattisgarh’s 2005 law is a slight improvement, treating witchcraft as a gender-neutral offence and extending imprisonment to five years. Rajasthan’s 2015 Act provides for punishment from three to seven years, a fine of ₹50,000, and empowers the state to impose collective fines on a village in cases of witch-branding, and provides for rehabilitation of the victim. This law is also gender-specific to women.
Maharashtra had introduced an anti-superstition bill in 2003, but had kept it on the backburner until the killing of Narendra Dabholkar in August 2013. The state then brought an ordinance banning black magic and made it into an Act in December. It criminalises a number of evil practices including witchcraft, provides for punishment of six months to seven years, and a fine of ₹5,000-50,000.
Karnataka’s 2017 law is a replica of Maharashtra’s and makes sixteen evil practices including witchcraft punishable. Though the bill was passed by the state in November 2017, it was notified only in January 2020. After tremendous public pressure and repeated interventions by the Guwahati High Court, Assam passed its own law in 2015—by far the most stringent of all the state laws, it provides for a maximum punishment of ten years and a fine of up to ₹1 lakh. Special courts are mandated to complete the trials within a year and victims are assured of rehabilitation and compensation.
It is obvious that there has been a marked reluctance and an inordinate delay in enacting these laws until specific incidents, popular demand or judicial directions made it imperative. Hence these laws are not uniform and their punishments are not stringent.
States such as Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat and Meghalaya have chosen not to enact their own laws yet. The Kerala Yukthi Vadhi Sangam filed a plea in February 2023 in high court to force such a law in the state. West Bengal is yet to enact a law despite an announcement by the State Law Commission in 2018. Most state laws are based on carceral jurisprudence and do not incorporate essential restorative provisions of rehabilitation and compensation to the victim.
Such shortcomings make it imperative to have a central law providing for prevention, penalisation and rehabilitation. The Odisha High Court observed in the Jitu Murmu case of 2020: “The absence of a central legislation has resulted in lack of uniformity in the application across the country.” A central law will iron out the inconsistencies in definitions, objects and punishments. It must incorporate standard features such as appointing special courts, stringent bail conditions, monetary compensation, raising awareness, victim rehabilitation and witness protection.
India is a signatory to many international conventions that decry discrimination and support the right to safety and to live a free and decent life, especially for women. In 2016, Raghav Lakhanpal introduced such a bill in the Lok Sabha. It never saw the light of day for reasons unexplained. It is time to introduce an updated bill and to comprehensively counter the curse.