Asia Times: Women branded 'witches' to settle scores



	February 23, 2000	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Women branded 'witches' to settle scores
By Sweta Kushry

PATNA, India - Neepudi and her five children, none older than 10, were axed to death in Mandwa village of Palamau district, in eastern India's Bihar state.

They were killed by Mohar Shah who accused Neepudi of being a witch and responsible for the death of his daughter-in-law. The incident took place in September 1997. Later it transpired that Shah had his eye on the land she owned and succeeded in his plan to wipe out the entire family because she was a woman.

The then Deputy Commissioner of West Singhbhum, Amit Khare, submitted a special report in which he mentions the cold-blooded killing of the family. He cites another instance of a family that was similarly killed for property.

The victims were Sohraj Munda, his wife Jaitadi and four sons and two daughters. Enquiries revealed that Sohrai Munda wanted to own the family's 16 kusum trees, valuable for its sap, and had quite deliberately spread a rumor that Jaitadi was a witch.

These are not isolated cases. Violence against women is a part of rural life in the state, resorted to by upper castes to keep the socially disadvantaged under economic and social subjugation and to inflict political ''lessons''.

In some areas of rural Bihar, while rape is resorted to by landowners and the police to crush dissent within the community, in tribal areas of south Bihar women are labelled witches as a cover for exploitative social arrangements.

The state government in Bihar outlawed the practice of labelling women as witches last July. The new law, Dayn Pratha Patisedh Vidheyak 1999, also takes a very serious view of anyone assisting in trying to identify or instigate others to identify a woman as a witch. Since large parts of the tribal districts are inaccessible by road, the district administration, and sometimes even non-governmental organizations, have not reached the interior villages.

In the absence of modern health care, people depend on ojhas, or spirit diviners, for remedies for minor and serious ailments. In exchange the ojhas take locally-brewed liquor, goats or hens.

A high incidence of witchcraft-related atrocities are reported from the inaccessible areas where literacy rates and health care facilities are poor. Lack of awareness, superstition about health and diseases further complicate the problems for the poor tribals, who are left completely at the mercy of their village headmen, who though a tribal is invariably a rich man and powerful. The victims are exploited and tortured by the village headman and the ojhas who work hand-in-hand to teach victims a lesson or usurp their property.

Women have been stripped and beaten up in public by the ojhas to force them to submit to the will of men they have dared to oppose. They are ''tortured'' in many different ways. The forms of violence perpetrated include having to eat their own excreta.

Recently the Free Legal Aid Committee which has been fighting against this evil in south Bihar brought some of the victims to a seminar in the state capital, Patna. Kunti narrated how she was made to eat her faeces by the ojhas, having been accused of killing the son of another tribal.

Parul was raped by three people in her house in 1995 following a land dispute between her father and their neighbor. When two of the neighbor's children died from an illness, the villagers accused Parul of being a witch. Police officer Khare reveals in his report that there was no truth to the claim, and the motive behind Parul's rape was only to grab the family's property or settle personal scores.

Among illiterate villagers their blind faith in ojhas and unscrupulous village practitioners has defied attempts to reform. Time and again the villagers have joined in the crime. The Legal Aid Committee confirms at least 8 women were killed in Singhbhum in 1998. Police reports corroborate the death of 357 so-called witches in the four tribal districts of Singhbhum, Palamau, Ranchi and Lohardaga between 1990 and 1996.

Calcutta-based sociologist Dr Pashupati Halder, an authority on tribal practices, says ojhas who people believe are possessed with divine power are common in the tribal belts of eastern India.

Ojhas brand women as witches in exchange for money or other gifts from the powerful and vested interests in the village. Their claim is never challenged. Often the village headman is also part of the conspiracy, and gives his stamp of approval.

Village ojhas live luxurious lives, and they have confessed that their primary interest is to earn money for which they use their power to exorcize evil spirits.

There are also occasions when their own interest comes first. In one such incident, Malati had to face the wrath of an ojha simply because she refused to have sex with him. She was set upon by the ojha and his henchmen who raped and then killed her in a village in Lohardaga.

(Inter Press Service)

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