Sunday, June 09, 2013

'Witches' of India suffer agonies of superstition...

DRESSED in a simple white sari and her arms adorned by golden bracelets, 56-year-old Nilimoni Kumar was until two years ago just another happy and modest housewife, scraping a living in a tribal area of rural India.

Along with her fellow villagers of Tola in Jharkhand State, a poor region of scattered forests and mud house villages in western India, the mother of four would toil for £1 a day while her husband worked as a peasant in the agricultural land she had inherited from her parents.

But shortly after the death of her husband in late 2011, her life changed dramatically: she was branded a witch.

A phenomenon which plagued Medieval Europe 600 years ago is gripping rural India.

Every year, thousands of Indian women are accused of witchcraft and used as scapegoats to justify random events like a bad harvest, an unexpected death or a mortal epidemic in a village.

Within days of her husband’s death, Kumar’s cousin’s wife fell ill and her in-laws accused her of practising witchcraft. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Swaziland makes it illegal for a witch to fly a broomstick above 150m!!!
  2. Nepal woman attacked as "witch", stripped naked, forced to eat excrement...
  3. India: 3 young men beat mother to death in exorcism ritual...
  4. Cultural killings of women in India: perpetrators seldom punished as society...
  5. Nepal mob burns 'witch' alive in horrifying attack...

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