CUTTACK: The Orissa High Court has held that various legislations at the State level have failed to check witch-hunting in the country because of the absence of a Central law.
The practice of witchcraft and sorcery continues to be prevalent in several states as the absence of a Central legislation has resulted in lack of uniformity in the application of law across the country. The provisions of the IPC, although applicable for the crime associated with the menace, have not proved to be effective in deterring these criminals, the HC said while rejecting bail pleas of two persons accused of witch-hunting and killing a woman on Monday.
Justice SK Panigrahi said enactment of several legislations at the state level to put an end to witchcraft and sorcery in recent times indicate that the society is surprisingly still afflicted by such mindless and absurd practice.
“The pattern of the perpetrators of the crime, sought to be curbed by the legislations, it appears, has a lot of similarities and the uneducated and economically weaker sections end up being their soft targets. The need to generate awareness among such susceptible sections of people, therefore, assumes importance and the authorities concerned may have to take effective steps, in this regard, to dispense with such primitive beliefs and mindsets, which defies logic,” Justice Panigrahi said.
The judgment said witch-hunting is still prevalent in Jharkhand, Bihar, Haryana, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Rajasthan and UP and as per the NCRB records, more than 2,500 victims were tortured and killed in witch-hunts between 2000 and 2016.