Witchcraft Accusations a Subterfuge

At sundown, Pusanidevi Manjhi recalled, nine village men stormed into her house shouting, “Witch, witch!” and dragged her out by her hair as her six small children watched helplessly.

“This woman is a witch!” the men announced to the villagers, said Manjhi, 36. She said they tied her ankles and locked her in a dark room.

“They beat me with bamboo sticks and metal rods and tried to pull my nails out. ‘You are a witch, admit it,’ they screamed at me again and again,” Manjhi said, tearfully recalling four days of captivity in June in this village in eastern Jharkhand state.

“They accused me of casting an evil spell on their paddy crop that was destroyed in a fire. I begged them and told them I was not a witch,” she said, showing wounds on her legs, thighs, hips and shoulders.

After a police investigation, the men who attacked Manjhi were arrested. An official said the attack was spurred by a powerful landowner who used local superstition to mask his attempts to maintain control.

Indian newspapers periodically publish reports about women who, after being accused of witchcraft, have been beaten or even killed. Sometimes assailants shave the women’s heads or tie shoes around their necks.

“Superstition is only an excuse. Often a woman is branded a witch so that you can throw her out of the village and grab her land, or to settle scores, family rivalry, or because powerful men want to punish her for spurning their sexual advances. Sometimes it is used to punish women who question social norms,” said Pooja Singhal Purwar, an official at the Jharkhand social welfare department.

“Women from well-to-do homes in the village are never branded witches,” Purwar said. “It is always the socially and economically vulnerable women who are targeted and boycotted.”

Purwar said she saw an average of five women a month denounced as witches and tortured in rural Jharkhand. Her department is running a project to oppose the practice, providing information at fairs and conducting street plays and puppet shows. Police have been alerted to track cases of women who are attacked, she said.

When Manjhi was imprisoned, her husband, a farmhand, sought help from village elders, who called a meeting to determine whether she was a witch and called a witch doctor for verification. By then, word had spread and the police arrived.

The nine men were charged under a state law that forbids people from making accusations of witchcraft. One of them, Gahan Lal, whose paddy had caught fire, later confessed to torturing Manjhi.

“Gahan Lal was a powerful landlord. There were fights all the time in the village over land and wages,” said Jayant Tirkey, the police officer on the case. “When his paddy caught fire, he blamed [Manjhi] for casting an evil spell. But that is merely an excuse. His real motive is to instill fear among the poor.”

Tirkey says he thinks witch doctors are to blame for superstitious practices, but adds that witch doctors are not arrested because they are not directly involved in the violence.

Leena Oraon, who is known as a witch doctor in Aragate village, says she studies rice grains to ascertain a witch’s presence. “I never name a witch,” she said. “I only give ... clues.

“Today’s doctors cannot cure ailments that are caused by a witch’s curse,” Oraon said. “That is why people come to me.”

According to a study by the Free Legal Aid Committee, only 2% of people charged with witch-hunting are convicted.

“People go scot-free because witnesses are hard to come by. Villagers often approve of the torture meted out to these women,” said Girija Shankar Jaiswal, a lawyer who heads the group. “They think [that] witch-hunting is a heroic act and that it will [cleanse] the society of evil.”

Only two Indian states, Jharkhand and Bihar, have outlawed witch-hunting. Last year, after a daylong debate, the legislative assembly of Tripura state unanimously decided that killing people for practicing witchcraft should be prevented.

But assembly members failed to agree on whether witchcraft was a science or superstition.