A young woman was killed on Friday night in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district allegedly due to torture amidst exorcism. This was the second such incident occurring in less than three months in Kerala, which had achieved total literacy almost three decades back and is said to have a socially enlightened population when compared to other Indian States.
Athira (21), daughter of Prasannakumar alias Suku of Vadasserikkara, Pathanamthitta was allegedly killed during the exorcism performed by Mithesh, son-in-law of her father’s elder brother Valsalan at his house in Omallur on Friday night. The police took Valsalan, secretary at the Pathanamthitta district Congress committee office, into custody but Mithesh was missing.
Doctors at the Pathanamthitta general hospital said that Athira, a second-year BSc student at the St Thomas College in Ranni in the district, was already dead when she was brought to the hospital by her relatives on Friday night. The police said the woman’s death was mysterious. A case for unnatural death has been registered.
There were injury marks at many spots on the woman’s body while her palms showed marks of burn injuries suffered from camphor-burning, a rite exorcists are generally believed to subject their ‘patients’ to. Also, her body had been smeared in ash and several other powders used generally for occult practices.
“The relatives who brought the woman – she was already dead – to the hospital last night said something vaguely about some black magic practice. They said she had fallen unconscious after some powders were sprinkled on her body or something like that,” a doctor of the general hospital, Pathanamthitta, said.
Doctors said the relatives had tried to take the body away but they did not allow this following suspicion. The police had reached the hospital only on Saturday morning though they had been informed by the hospital authorities about the matter immediately, sparking allegations of political interference because of Valsalan’s Congress connection.
Confirming that exorcism had taken place at Valsalan’s house on Friday night, an elderly woman staying in a neighbouring house said, “Shrill cries had been coming out of that house in the night. There were cries of a man and a woman and the neighbours were unable to sleep. That is how I came to know of it. This has been happening for almost a week.”
However, relatives of the deceased claimed that she had died after falling unconscious following an intense attack of epilepsy. They said she had been taken to the taluk office last week seeking medical help for her epilepsy but was referred to the medical college hospital by the doctor there. That was why she was taken to the house of Valsalan, they said.
The parents of the deceased rejected the charge that she had died during exorcism. When questioned by the police, they maintained that Athira had fallen on a lamp some days ago during an attack of epilepsy. They told the police that they had no complaint but the police saw mystery in the death primarily due to the burn marks in the palms.
The general hospital had witnessed some tension after activists of pro-CPI(M) youth outfit DYFI blocked the police from taking the body to another hospital for post-mortem. The State DYFI leadership said it would intensify its campaign against “exploitation of faith” in the context of the incident while the Rationalists Association demanded new law to deal with such practices.
A self-styled Exorcist, Sirajuddin, had tortured a young woman, Haseena (26), to death in the first week of July at Thazhava near Karunagappally in Kollam district during a rite to cast away the Jinn (evil spirit) which he said had got into her body. Haseena had died after suffering fractures in backbone, injury to internal organs and massive bleeding in the exorcist’s torture.