Sushila Mahato, 45, along with her son and over a dozen other family members stood at Albert Ekka Chowk as it rained heavily on Tuesday, demanding protection from those who accused her and her entire family of practicing witchcraft.
“They (accused) are threatening to kill us. They are also demanding us to pay them the money which they had to spend on court proceedings after they were arrested,” she said.
Sushila, who worked as a mid day meal cook at government middle school in Chhota Krishanpur village of Saraikela was recently declared a witch by the villagers. While she has been working as the cook since 2005, it was recently that the school management committee, led by para teacher of the school Jaydev Mahato and others declared her a witch.
“They stopped children from eating the food I cooked, claiming that I practice witchcraft and children are falling ill after eating the food I cook. I was asked to stop working in the kitchen and I obliged but it did not seem enough for them,” Mahato said.
It was on May 23, when the entire country was busy watching the vote counting for Lok Sabha election, that Sushila and her family were being tortured by the villagers.
“We have a joint family with more than 30 members. On May 23, the villagers dragged us to the cremation ground, shaved off the head of the men, cut the nails of women and made us bathe with the drain water there, claiming that they have performed our last rites. They were trying to shave the head of women too but we managed to escape,” Mahato said.
After the incident, FIR was lodged against 26 people at Rajnagar police station on May 27 and 14 persons were arrested. However, they got out on bail on June 12 and since then have been harassing the family, threatening to kill them.
Sushila’s son, 25-year-old Jagat Kishor Mahato said, “The entire village is a part of it. They made my family members sign on blank paper and took Rs. 500 fine per head for practicing ‘witchcraft’. Now they are telling us to pay them the money they spent on the court case.”
Led by Ajay Jaiswal, secretary of Association for Social and Human Awareness (ASHA), an organization working against witch hunting in the State, Sushila and her family submitted a letter to the DGP Kamal Nayan Choubey on Tuesday requesting arresting of all the culprits and providing police protection to the family.
Data of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) shows that the State has been among the top three in country since 2001 in the number of witch hunting murders being recorded and had been in leading for four consecutive years from 2013 to 2016.
The data shows that 523 people were lynched in the State from 2001 till 2016 for allegedly practicing witchcraft. Meanwhile, data of Jharkhand police shows that from January 2017 to April 2019, a total of 77 people were killed after being declared witches