Indian family of five beaten to death on suspicion of ‘practising witchcraft’

Three people have been arrested in India’s eastern state of Bihar after five members of a family were brutally killed on suspicion of performing witchcraft on children.

A mob of about 50 people wielding sticks and other weapons barged into the family’s home at Tetgama village, Purnea district, on Sunday night, and assaulted and burned them, police said.

Their charred bodies were recovered on Monday morning after a minor family member, the sole survivor, reported the attack to police.

Police said that they were investigating whether the five people were burned alive or set on fire after being killed. The dead included three women.

The villagers suspected that the family was responsible for the fatal illness of a boy in the village who had died 10 days earlier. On Sunday night, according to local reports, the child’s brother had also taken ill.

The victims were identified as Babu Lal Oraon, 50, his mother Kanto Devi, 70, and his wife and two adult children. The lone survivor was Oraon’s 16-year-old son, who was away at a relative’s when the attack happened. He alleged the entire village was behind the attack.

He alleged the mob accused his mother of killing the boy with witchcraft and proceeded to attack his family with sticks and sharp weapons, the Hindustan Times reported.

“It’s an Oraon community village, with most of the villagers belonging to the tribal group. We received information that five members of a family were assaulted and killed,” Pankaj Kumar Sharma, a local police officer, said. “Whether they were burnt alive or set on fire after death is under investigation.”

Although the survivor had named four people in his complaint, Mr Sharma said, police suspected many more villagers were involved in the attack.

“Raids are ongoing to apprehend the remaining accused and we’re also investigating to check for any further involvements,” he added.

Senior police officer Pramod Kumar Mandal said the Oraon family had allegedly been forced by a fellow villager named Ramdev Mahto to “heal” his sick child. When the child didn’t recover, he said, they killed all five family members.

"This is a ghastly incident. Nobody can believe that such an incident can occur in the 21st century,” Mr Mandal said.

Attacks, mainly on women and widows, on suspicion of practising witchcraft are not uncommon, especially in eastern India, despite laws banning witch hunts.

In 2018, nine people were sentenced to death for murdering three members of a family they had accused of being witches.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, around 2,100 such murders took place in the country between 2001 and 2012. In 2020 alone, at least 15 women were murdered on suspicion of witchcraft.