The cruel practice of witch-hunting

Kavita Charanji, New Delhi

WITCHES don’t exist yet in rural India women continue to be branded witches. Their heads are shaven, they are sexually assaulted, forced to eat dirt, burnt alive and killed because in the male mind witches are for real.

Superstitious beliefs are not, of course, the only reason behind such criminal assaults. This is revealed in a survey, “The Dark Realities of Witch-Hunting: New Evidence from Bihar”, carried out in 2023-24 by the Nirantar Trust and the Bihar Women’s Federation along with other groups in 10 districts of Bihar.

Most women branded witches are married, live in joint families, are between 46 and 66 years old, have seen a recent increase in their income and play a leadership role in their village. Around 97 percent are from Dalit, Other Backward Castes (OBCs), or tribal backgrounds and come from landless households.

The survey was sparked by a horrific incident in Dumaria block of Gaya district in Bihar when a Dalit woman was assaulted and burnt alive after being branded a witch. Other cases in Bihar’s districts surfaced. A woman in Muzaffarnagar was disrobed and paraded naked, with her head shaved. This shocking incident made news but the outrage died down quickly. One or two women in each of Bihar’s 45,000 villages face the danger of being branded a witch.

“We felt that this issue has become so normalized and on such a large scale that it needed to be addressed. It is very dehumanizing, and is the cruellest form of violence against women,” says Santosh Sharma, who leads Nirantar Trust’s grassroots programme in Assam and Bihar, which focuses on women’s empowerment and gender-based violence.

There is no Central law that directly addresses this issue. Four states, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Assam, have laws related to witch-hunting. 

At a press conference to discuss “25 Years of Bihar Witch Prohibition Act 2000: How Many Killed and How Many Displaced?”, it was clear that the law had failed abysmally in preventing witch-hunting.

For its survey, Nirantar talked to 145 women from 114 villages who were assaulted after being called witches. They found that marriage did not offer protection. As many as 121 of the 145 women surveyed lived with their husbands and children in joint families. The majority of the victims were married, widowed, deserted or unable to bear children. 

One hundred and eight women were between 46 and 66 years of age, an indicator that women past their reproductive age were more vulnerable.

The perpetrators of witch-hunting were often family members. According to the survey, 43 percent of the women said that accusations of witchcraft originated within their families. Neighbours followed, and eventually the entire village community ganged together to brand them witches.

Violence could also be traced to deep-rooted patriarchy. Vocal women in the village were more likely to be targeted. These women occupied leadership or representative roles in institutions like the panchayats, Self-Help Groups, anganwadis, and so on.

Another reason was a visible increase in the income of the woman or her family. Deaths of individuals, children or livestock within the family also led to accusations against a “witch”.

Women faced the most persecution during the summer and monsoon months when diseases like cholera, malaria and kala-azar were at their peak.

Ojhas, or ‘witch’ doctors/traditional healers endorsed accusations of witchcraft since they earned a living out of such superstitious beliefs. They were the first to ‘confirm’ such suspicions about a woman. It was clearly in their interest to perpetuate such myths.

State laws criminalizing accusations of witchcraft have failed miserably. Very few officials or panchayat heads are aware of them.  The police too are unaware of the provisions of the law. “There is no implementation of the law,” says Ajay Jaiswal, a lawyer and founder of the Jharkhand-based non-profit,  Association for Social and Human Awareness (ASHA).

 Laxmi Sahu, secretary of the Bihar Women’s  Federation based in Champaran, said they get no support from the justice system. She said the practice of witch-hunting is rampant in the state. Just four months  ago, a  woman was accused of witchcraft. Her hair was cut, she was garlanded with shoes, thrashed and taken out in a procession to the beating of drums.

When Sahu and her group went to meet her at her maternal home, they found her so traumatized that she was unable to talk to them. She refused to return to the village. Two men were  caught by the police but  freed later. “The panchayat, mukhiya and sarpanch do pay attention to cases of domestic violence but they are completely silent on witchcraft-related violence. The entire community ranges against the woman,” says Sahu.

Women suspected of witchcraft become completely devastated, says Kavita Kumari, a Bihar Women's Federation activist from Muzaffarpur. “Depression is an understatement. They feel suffocated and live in constant fear,” she says.

The Nirantar Trust report has made several recommendations to policymakers to curb this form of violence. It has called for greater accountability of ojhas and panchayats. “The ojhas are the main instigators. We need very strong penal action against them or they should be offered an alternative livelihood so that they can earn a living with dignity,” says Sharma.

The report also seeks dedicated state-level helplines for women so that those who have faced or are vulnerable to such violence can call the helpline. Also,  laws to combat such violence need to be made more effective by educating officials, the police and panchayat heads. Tackling this form of  violence must become a priority in Gender Justice Centres at state level, it says.