Absolute shockingly, a "witch doctor" who beheaded an 11-year-old boy and offered the head as a sacrifice to a deity to improve his fortunes has been sentenced to death, as informed by the police on Tuesday.
Practising witchcraft
According to the Police, a local court in reduced to poverty Chhattisgarh state in central India impressed with a sense of guilt 32-year-old Dilip Rathia on Monday of murder and sentenced him to hang for beheading the boy.
Furthermore, investigating officer Praful Thakur said that they have proved the man who beheaded the boy and his head was offered to the local deity to obtain better luck.
The case, which highlights the occurrence of occult beliefs in remote areas, came to light when police found the child's headless skeleton in the tribal-dominated village of Barpali in Raigarh district, 195 kilometres northeast of state capital Raipur. He further said that Forensic tests proved the skeleton was that of an 11-year-old boy named Praveen who disappeared in February 2012 while visiting a village fair. Fact-fully, Police while acting on a tip-off, raided the home of a man said by locals to be a "witch doctor" where they found the child's head.
As told by local police official Rahul Bhagat that the man was "practising witchcraft" and "was declared guilty on charges of murder, hiding evidence and giving false information to conceal the offence.
Human sacrifices in superstitious India
Human sacrifices in deeply religious and superstitious India usually occur in poorer areas where some people fear and revere practitioners of so-called black magic where the victims are ritually killed by witch doctors to please or appease deities. In a recent widely-publicised case of suspected child sacrifice, the bodies of a two-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl were found at a home in the industrial town of Bhilai in Chhattisgarh in November 2010. Seven months before that, the beheaded body of a factory worker was found in a temple in the eastern state of West Bengal.
Human sacrifices in deeply religious and superstitious India has been quiet common practice but to imagine it being observed in the 21st century is not just tough to handle but highly disgusting for humankind.
It truly says, still how backward we are!
(AW:Samrat Biswas)
