Human Sacrifice Stalks India
A new sacrificial murder involving a four-year-old girl who was beheaded and offered as human sacrifice has highlighted the fact that witchcraft in India claims hundreds of lives every year.
The latest case—which took place in the world-famous tea-producing region of Assam—involved a “tantrik” sacrificing the girl after being asked to provide magical help in finding a lost cell phone.
According to the Indian Express newspaper, the girl’s body was recovered from a forest near her home in Ratanpur tea estate in the Charaideo district of upper Assam. Her severed head and arms were found nearby.
The girl had been “tortured to retrieve the lost cell phone” of a local villager, named as Hanuman Bhumij. The lost cell phone belonged to Bhumij’s 14-year-old daughter.
Bhumij and another suspect Ariful Ali, identified as the ‘tantrik’ assistant, have been arrested, but the main accused, two men named as Abdul Jalil and Gabbar Singh, are still in hiding.
The New Indian Express newspaper revealed that the sacrifice had taken place to “appease [a local] god in order that one of them could find the mobile phone his daughter had lost.”
