RIGHTFULLY OURS

Introduction

Despite India’s march towards economic prosperity, social progress remains a distant dream for many in the country. The archaic practice of witch-hunting, rooted in longstanding social and cultural beliefs, continues to persist across rural regions in several states of India. In the Indian state of Jharkhand, an incident of a witch hunt recently came to light. Two women, a mother and daughter duo, was brutally killed on accusations of witchcraft by a resident of a nearby village whose wife had been sick for a long time. This incident is just one of the many reported incidents of witch hunts. A 2023 report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) recorded that in 2023, across India, a total of 74 murders occurred on accusations of witchcraft. The Apex Court of India has opined that even if the number of witch-hunting-related deaths seems insignificant, each of these degrading incidents is a blot on the constitutional spirit.[i] Women accused of witchcraft are taken to ojhas/badwas (traditional faith healers) for treatment. More often than not, it is these village faith healers who initially brand a woman as a witch. Often, several brutalities take place in the name of witch-hunts. Women who are accused are socially isolated, lynched, disrobed, sexually assaulted and made to eat faecal matter. It is pertinent to note that, in several cases, such witch hunts target widows with property, revealing the existence of an alternative motive in the garb of superstition. The continued incidents of witch hunts, despite 79 years of Indian independence, point towards a systematic failure of the governance framework.

Existing Laws

In total, thirteen states in India, namely, Jharkhand, Bihar, Haryana, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh have the problem of witch hunts[ii]. However, no central law currently exists to address the same. Seven of the above-mentioned states have specific legislation addressing the issue. In particular, the Indian states of Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Rajasthan have laws addressing witch-hunts. Two Indian states, Maharashtra and Karnataka, have anti-superstition laws. However, massive disparities exist in how the different laws punish witch-hunters. While some states have progressive, all-encompassing laws against witch-hunting, other states have laws that essentially affirm the existence of “witch-craft”. For instance, on one hand, Assam’s 2015 anti-witch-hunting law has specific provisions punishing abetment, torture, outraging of modesty, attempts at committing witch hunts, as well as attributing misfortune to a person. Fines up to Rs. 1,00,000 and prison sentences up to 10 years can be imposed upon the offender. The Assam law also provides for Rehabilitation Centres, free legal assistance and sensitisation against witch-hunting. On the other hand, the anti-witch-hunting laws of Rajasthan and Odisha make witchcraft punishable, affirming that it is indeed possible to practice witch-craft. Furthermore, in certain states such as Bihar and Jharkhand, anti-witch-hunting laws exist; however, they aren’t comprehensive laws that address witch-hunting as a multifaceted issue. For example, Jharkhand’s Prevention of Witch Practices Act, 2001, does not have provisions related to rehabilitation or compensation. While compensation may be claimed through the respective state’s victim compensation schemes, in cases of death or severe injury, these schemes are general in nature and do not address witch-hunt-related crimes separately. Therefore, compensation under such Schemes can only be availed by victims of witch-hunting and their family members when the general criteria laid down by a particular scheme are fulfilled.

Moreover, while only a handful of states have anti-witch-hunting laws, there have been reports of witch-hunting in other states too. The social taboos and the rural setting in which witch-hunting usually occurs also mean that there is a high possibility of underreporting of incidents. Moreover, several of the existing state legislations, while addressing the issue of witchcraft on the surface, fail to consider the social causes for the same and the requirement to address these social causes to eliminate witch-hunting from society. In 2022, the Prevention and Prohibition of Witch-Branding and Witch-Hunting and other Harmful Practices Bill, 2022 was introduced as a single-member Bill in the Rajya Sabha. This Bill was intended to introduce a strict regime against witch-hunting and fill several gaps present in the existing law. However, the Bill could not become law.

The Way Forward

Continued witch-hunting in rural India is a direct attack on the right to life and dignity under Article 21, which is one of the core tenets of India’s Constitution. To tackle this infringement of Article 21, what the country needs is an all-encompassing law that addresses witch-hunting not only as a superstitious practice, but as a weapon that systematically targets vulnerable women from lower castes, their families and their property by branding them as evil entities and isolating them from society. The 2022 Bill addressed the problem well, providing for speedy trials, harsher punishments and a mechanism to promote awareness among the general public. Moreover, the Bill included not just physical abuse, but also mental abuse within the definition of “witch-hunting”, taking into consideration the ostracization that women accused of “witch-craft” go through before a physical crime against these women is actually committed. The Bill also contained provisions for Victim Compensation, rehabilitation, as well as a public-awareness component.

But an ideal law targeting witch-hunting will take into consideration not just the punitive aspect of combating “witch-hunts”, but also the deep-seated misogyny, casteism and superstition in society that leads to these crimes. These crimes usually occur in rural and poorer regions of Indian States. Therefore, in a realistic scenario, any public awareness/preventive measures against the practice of witch-hunting will require the active involvement of the village self-governing institutions, i.e. the Panchayats. The Panchayats hold a massive influence over people in the Indian countryside. Any law/regulation tackling superstitious beliefs such as witch-hunting needs to involve the Panchayats in their blueprints. For instance, in rural awareness programmes aimed at addressing witch-hunting, the Panchayat and its officials should assume responsibility for disseminating awareness and educating the community on the issue. Therefore, any Central Act which is created would also need to give significant discretion to respective State Governments and Gram Panchayats when it comes to organisation of public awareness programmes and activities to counter witch hunts.

The Hon’ble Supreme Court of India in Gaurav Jain v. State of Bihar & Ors.[iii] also directed setting up of special cells in districts vulnerable to witch-hunting, for collection of data and passing on information regarding activities related to witch-hunts. While this direction was confined to the State of Bihar in the aforesaid judgment, the inclusion of such special cells in a Central legislation will help in curing the underreporting of witch-hunting.

The Hon’ble Calcutta High Court, in State of West Bengal v. Kali Singh & Ors[iv], also posed another question asking whether the perpetrators of such crimes are, in a sense, victims themselves. The Hon’ble Calcutta High Court went on to emphasise the importance of education and availability of socio-economic opportunities in eradicating superstition, bringing us to another reason for the prevalence of witch-hunting in rural India, which is low penetration of education and lack of adequate economic opportunities in rural India.  Even in those pockets of rural India where formal education is available, it focuses more on rote learning, rather than on dismantling and reforming social structures that uphold social evils such as misogyny, casteism and superstition. An effective way to completely eradicate witch-hunting would be to formulate policies ensuring that school curricula in rural India are designed to delegitimise the practice of witch-hunting in the minds of school-going children and increase opportunities for gainful employment. Furthermore, in the Indian countryside, dependence on the easily accessible local “ojhas/badwas” or faith healers exists due to lack of access to modern medicine. This dependence on faith healers can only be eliminated by bringing policies that increase access to modern medicine in rural areas. Thus, a central legislation adopting a multipronged approach, targeting not just the punitive aspect of witch-hunting, but also focusing on bringing structural reforms to those parts of the country where the practice of witch-hunting is still prevalent, is needed to strike at the root of witch-hunts in India that, to this date, are being utilised as a tool to suppress women

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[i] Rajeev Kumar Upadhyay v Srikant Upadhyay, 2024 SCC OnLine SC 3807.

[ii] State of West Bengal v Kali Singh, 2018 SCC OnLine Cal 7237.

[iii] 1991 SCC (Cri) 133.

[iv] See n ii.