Witch hunt in India - who is to blame for the fact that the cow does not give milk (8 photos)

In some rural areas of India, real witch hunts still exist. Several women accused of witchcraft in Rajasthan have revealed how their lives changed after being branded witches.





One of the so-called witches

Why weren't they killed?

In fact, they were lucky. From 2005 to 2015, more than 2,000 women were killed in India on accusations of witchcraft. However, laws prohibiting witch hunts are considered relatively new in India. People are not yet used to raising witches with pitchforks.

So several managed to escape, but they were beaten and became outcasts from society.



Dark skin tone is one of the signs of untouchability

One was called a witch because the cows in her village stopped producing milk. The second one was accused by a young girl of putting the evil eye on her.

“They didn’t kill me, but they didn’t leave me alive either”

This is how 40-year-old Kesi Chadana, who was called a witch in 2014, described her life. Then she came home from another village after giving birth to her daughter, and a crowd of fellow villagers was already standing around her house. While the woman was not at home, everyone decided that she was the witch.



Locals torture a girl accused of witchcraft

The locals locked her family in the house and took away everyone's phones, and then began to torture her. Neighbors and relatives beat her, stripped her naked, forced her to wear bundles of old shoes around her neck and heavy stones on her head. And even ride around neighboring villages on a donkey. All these are supposedly witch cleansing rituals.

She says they planned to burn her at the stake later that evening, but the police found out what was happening. The woman miraculously escaped, but more than 30 people were arrested and later sentenced to prison for their roles in the attack.



In India, go figure out whether he is casting a spell or praying to one of a thousand gods

It was only a year later, in 2015, that the state passed a law banning witch hunts.

But you still have to catch and catch witches!

Despite similar new laws in several states, the practice of witch-hunting based on superstition continues in villages across the country.

In the last two years alone, more than a hundred women in Rajasthan have been accused of witchcraft. They all said they experienced violence that lasted for hours or days. Following these ordeals, they were ostracized from their communities, sometimes without any hope of help. Even when the police intervened and arrested the attackers, life remained hellish for these women and their families.



The husband of a beaten witch, such a simple, even poor life in such “wild” villages

Witches are usually women from a lower caste (oh, how unexpected). Even if they are respected members of society. For example, the case of cows that stopped giving milk. This was blamed on the “witch” Noji Regan, a 60-year-old widow who had lived all her life in this village, while her vigilantes grew up before her eyes.

And although her tormentors were arrested, and the woman was able to survive after being dragged through the village by her hair, no one accepted her back into the community. She found herself an outcast in her own village. Because widows are the most defenseless class of women after divorced women (those are generally not considered people in the provinces).



This is a show about a witch hunt, the children are listening

Frequently, frenzied people are led to believe in a witch by bhops; these are something like local healers-diviners (charlatans). When they are asked to see why the goat is sick, he can often point out “the evil widow woman is drinking his blood because she is a witch.” And then the people themselves will figure out who the widow is.

Obscurantism in the 21st century

Bhopas in small communities are sometimes the most powerful people. For example, the young woman Kishni Kharwad could not be cured in the hospital. The young husband was worried and went to ask bhopa what was wrong with his wife.



European witch hunt. There is nothing to be proud of, we also fished, but in the Middle Ages. But they caught it!

And when he returned from the healer, he began beating the patient. Because bhopa said that his wife is a witch. An hour of persuasion was enough for the man to believe a stranger and not his wife. Bhopa said that a witch can be purified if she eats coal and drinks urine. The girl refused to eat and drink, and her relatives decided that she did not want to be healed and kicked her out of the house. So she miraculously managed to escape to her parents' house.

The worst thing is that even when the state tries to restore order and arrests those who attacked the “witch,” the blame for the fact that the men ended up in prison falls again on the same tortured woman.



Witch "cure" often involves urine and excrement

Often those accused of witchcraft try to move to other villages before it comes to murder, but they have to hastily sell plots of land at a greatly reduced price.

But the fact that a law banning witch hunts was signed in 2015 is already a big breakthrough for India.