New Delhi – The police arrested three people suspected of having brutally murdered five members of a family accused of witchcraft in the eastern Indian State of Bihar. The police said that the victims had been hacked to death and that their bodies then burned by a crowd of dozens of residents of the village of Temta on Sunday evening.
Three women were one of the victims, said the police, who had recovered the charred family remains on Monday evening. Residents would have suspected the family of having caused the deadly disease of a local boy.
“We have stopped three accused so far,” said News Pramod Kumar Mandal, Deputy Inspector General of the Purnea District, where the incident was held.
Bihar / X police
Mandal confirmed that the victims had been accused of witchcraft and had identified them as Babu Lal Oraon, 50, with his mother Kanto Devi, 70, and his wife and two adult children.
The couple’s 16 -year -old son was the only survivor in the family. He told the police that a crowd of around 50 people had stormed his house around 10 p.m. Sunday, accusing his mother of witchcraft, then attacking the family with blade weapons, the Hindustan time The newspaper cited a police officer like.
The incident occurred about 10 days after the death of a child in the village due to a disease. Sunday evening, the child’s brother also fell ill and the villagers suspected witchcraft as a cause, triggering the assault on the Oraon family, NDTV reported, citing the police.
Bihar police trained a dedicated team to investigate the murders.
Sweety Sahrawat, Superintendent of the Purnea police, who heads the investigation, told CBS News that his team would stop everyone suspected of participating in the attack “as soon as possible”.
Sahrawat noted that many residents of the village were suspected of participating in the attack, and many residents did not help the police to identify the attackers.
Cases of attacks on people accused of witchcraft are not uncommon in India and other countries in South Asia. Governments and militants have struggled to end attacks, which are based on searge superstitions.
The belief in witchcraft is also common in certain rural communities in West Africa and elsewhere on the continent. Earlier this month, Six people accused of witchcraft were burned alive, stoned or beaten to death by a militia in Burundi.