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In India, a woman and her four children were murdered in a village in the east of the country. The mother was accused by other villagers of being a witch. A crime that is not isolated in the country: the killings of so-called witches are multiplying in this region of India and worry the authorities.
A few days ago, in a tribal village in the state of Orissa, in the east of the country, a family lost their daughter due to her illness.
However, a traditional doctor tells them that the death was due to a woman, supposed to be a witch, who would have cast a spell on the girl. Killing a woman presumed by the doctor and her four young children was just a guess.
This type of crime is common in Orissa. So much so that in 2013 the regional government adopted a specific law against the "witch hunt". But that did not stop the acts of violence, quite the contrary: 99 people were killed in this persecution in 2017, compared to 83 the year before.
The main factor involved is the lack of access to quality care in these remote areas, leaving residents at the mercy of unscrupulous traditional doctors. Some thus use the superstitions of the inhabitants to avenge or reconquer the lands of widowed women.
In northeastern India, 15 people were arrested in May 2018 for the rape of a 16-year-old girl who had been badually badaulted and burned alive by members of her village .
After the badual badault, the victim complained to the village council, which simply imposed a hefty fine on the defendants. But the accused, furious against the sentence, lit the victim and burned him alive in his home. The drama shows how traditional village authorities can be an obstacle to justice in India.
Although the country is the sixth largest economy in the world, half of its inhabitants live in small villages. Village council members have to solve public health problems, but they end up functioning as some kind of local activist.
Fighting between neighbors or suspicious deaths are resolved even before they reach the police, considered very slow and corrupt.
The problem is that they are usually dominant caste men who run these councils and that their decisions regarding the murder and rape of lower caste women may be influenced by their patriarchal culture, especially in the north of the country.
The complicit silence of the villages is also one of the reasons why most rapes committed in India are never reported to the security authorities. Most feminicides go unpunished in the country.
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