Tag: Human Sacrifice

Guwahati Police Arrest 5 Persons in 2019 Kamakhya Human Sacrifice Case

In June 2019, a 64-year-old woman was killed during the period of Ambubachi, an annual festival that celebrates goddess Kamakhya’s menstrual cycle.

Guwahati: The Assam police recently cracked a nearly four-year human sacrifice case, arresting five men on April 4 for their alleged involvement in the ritual which was performed near the iconic Kamakhya temple in Guwahati.

Kamakhya temple is considered a centre of tantric practices and is visited by millions of devotees every year. It is one of the 51 Shakti Pitha, which are significant pilgrimage destinations spread across India. According to Hindu mythology, Kamakhya is the spot where the female anatomical part of Shiva’s first wife Sati fell when her body was dismembered by Vishnu to stop Shiva, who in a terribly tumultuous state of mind was about to destroy the universe while carrying his wife’s corpse.

During the ten-day autumnal Durga Puja festival, it is routine for devotees to offer animal sacrifice. Male buffaloes, goats and pigeons are slaughtered during the eighth and ninth days of the festival.

The main temple is surrounded by individual temples dedicated to the ten Mahavidyas of Saktism.

The five people who were apprehended were identified for the first time in front of the press by Diganta Borah, the Guwahati police commissioner. They are Mata Prasad Pandey who was arrested from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh; Suresh Paswan from Jalukbari area, Guwahati; Kanu Acharya aka Kanu Tantric also from Guwahati; Raju Baba from Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh; and Pradip Pathak from Mathura, Uttar Pradesh.

The accused were arrested almost four years after the state police formed a special team to solve the case. The killing of the 64-year-old woman, according to the police, happened in June 2019 during the period of Ambubachi, an annual festival that celebrates the goddess’s menstrual cycle.

Over lakhs of devotees from all walks of life across India and to some extent devotees from other countries throng the tantric site to observe the rituals when the doors of the ten temples are closed for five days.

Borah, addressing the media on Tuesday, said that Pradip was the mastermind behind the alleged human sacrifice and was utterly superstitious in his beliefs.

“We formed a special team and focused on the unsolved murder. The corpse was found with the head decapitated. The body was identified by the woman’s son, who recognised a tattoo on her body,” the commissioner said.

The police found that Mata Prasad was living in another person’s house in a village named Sitalakuchi in Cooch Behar, West Bengal. The special team raided the house of the owner, where Pandey often stayed. “We got to know that he was in Jabalpur, tracked him and arrested him with help from Madhya Pradesh police on March 25,” said Borah.

He also added, “The special team took Pandey to Guwahati, where he was interrogated and revealed the names of the other accused.”

One of the other accused, Pathak, was a government employee and was working as an executive for a cooperative society in Uttar Pradesh.

When the police raided the house at Sitalakuchi village, they found a sack which contained the victim’s clothes, Aadhaar card, mobile phone and other items. According to Borah, Pandey had told the owner that the sack contained his clothes, and he would pick them up when he returned.

Borah added, “The plot was hatched at Bhootnath cremation grounds in Guwahati. Pradip believed in occultism. He met a baba from north India during the 2019 Ambubachi. The other accused converged at Bhootnath cremation grounds in Guwahati and purchased a machete.”

He said that the victim was accompanied by two other women and a baba from Bengal for a midnight Tantric occult ritual at Bhootnath. “We also know that there were 12 other people who were present at Bhootnath grounds. It was Pradip who engineered the human sacrifice plot. They took the victim from Bhootnath to the steps of Jai Durga Mandir at Kamakhya and committed the crime. We are investigating who pinned her down, got hold of her hands and legs, and who beheaded her with the machete. ”

The accused will probably be tried under the anti-superstition Assam Witch Hunting (Prohibition, Prevention and Protection) Act 2015.

Widespread condemnation

Jagadish Bhuyan of Assam Jatiya Parishad, a political party, condemned the incident. “This incident is a stain on mankind. This is not what Hinduism’s actual concept of dharma teaches. Real dharma is truth, humanity and being virtuous. What the five men did was an act of sin. It can never be forgiven. Such horrendous acts are an offshoot of religious fundamentalism. I condemn all forms of religious fundamentalism. We at AJP condemn the act. Lately, we have been witnessing religious fundamentalism across India,” said Bhuyan.

The alleged case of human sacrifice was also met with serious condemnation from Ellora Vigyan Manch (EVM), an anti-superstitious organisation that is involved in spreading scientific temperament across the state and for organ donation.

“We at EVM seriously condemn such acts of savagery. Even in this age of scientific development, such medieval religious beliefs persist. Thugs and con men in the guise of ‘holy men’ carry out such barbaric crimes. The absence of scientific temper amongst large sections of people enables such acts and the exploitation of people. Past governments have done little to put an end. On the contrary, the present ruling dispensation at the centre and in the state of Assam has been patronising and promoting superstitions and blind beliefs in various forms. A Central law is needed to curb such acts of savagery. Awareness campaigns for scientific temper are required,” said Isfaqur Rahman.

Records about Kamakhya can be traced back thousands of years. Ancient texts like Kalika Puran and Yogini Tantra mention the legend of Kamakhya. However, history is quite vague on whether acts of human sacrifices were committed or not.

Nevertheless, that has not stopped people from trying to commit acts of human sacrifice. In 2003, a one-and-a-half-year-old toddler was rescued by devotees and by temple authorities when a quack tried to sacrifice the child.

The travelogue of French explorer Jean-Baptiste Chevalier describes the ritual sacrifice of animals at the temple. He adds that in the past, humans were also sacrificed.

The travelogue is titled Adventures of Jean-Baptiste Chevalier in Eastern India (1752-1765). It was translated into English by Caroline Dutta-Baruah and by Jean Deloche and was first published in India in 2008. The authors describe the explorer’s visit to Kamakhya as:

“Goaty (Guwahati) is one of the largest cities of the kingdom… The city is located at the foot of a hill on the bank of the Barampoutou (The Brahmaputra). On the top of the hill is the much-revered pagoda.”

Chevalier says the king gave him permission to attend the sacrifice. He says:

“What a surprise it was to see an immense park surrounded with fences containing a couple (male/female) each of all species of quadrupeds and birds known in the entire kingdom. All the governors of the provinces and the chiefs of the village have to provide their share and send it to the pagoda every three years. When the time arrives for the sacrifices, this entire fauna is immolated at the altar of the goddess. In the past, it was not only animals that had their throats cut, but also a man and a woman, who were part of the ceremonials.” (sic)

Debate: The ‘Sacrifice’ of Thinking and the Altar of Unreason

When cultural shifts that encourage superstition, and are decidedly discriminatory, emerge leading to extreme acts such as human sacrifices, the field that needs to respond swiftly is that of the liberal arts.

The Elanthoor sacrifices understandably restoked the fires of the religiosity versus secular debate. Theologians and socio-political commentators denounced the act:

while influential “intellectuals” are interested only in literature and not in promoting scientific temper, the media too failed in this battle against superstition because they no longer promote “critical thinking”.

Literature promotes critical thinking because it forces us to confront humans unlike us, that ‘human’ is a plural category and everyone within the category has the right to be treated equally. Everything hinges on how we define the human, and this is the task not of anatomists or political scientists alone, but of literature which shows us this diversity. But we shall get to literature and humanities in a while.

Mohammed Shafi, one of the accused in the Elanthoor ‘human sacrifice’ case, being produced at court, in Kochi. Photo: PTI

Languages of religiosity

The language of ‘faith’ and ‘religion’ when employed to speak of contemporary India is positioned as antagonistic to ‘secular’ and ‘modern’. This antagonism is fuelled by the language of the state itself. Claiming ‘scientific’ achievements for ancient times, reclaiming versions of ‘discoveries’ and technologies as native – and as a matter of faith – the state constructs a discourse that feeds readily into the above antagonism.

When state discourse enters the public language and public imaginary – a shift from the 1980s and even the 1990s India – it also invokes other, less pleasant, subtextual aspects of ancient beliefs and rituals, including practices such as human sacrifice. For how does one disentangle, from the discourse of ‘ancient glories’, strands of thought that are empowering and egalitarian from those that are sexist or anti-rights?

Sociologist-philosopher Jurgen Habermas cautioned that the validity claims of any religion must ‘adapt to the authority of the sciences’. He also conceded that individuals may retain a sense of religious belonging but without abandoning their autonomy (or, by extension, free will). But what we see now – and not just in India, let us not forget the ‘intelligent design’ debate across the US, critiqued by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion – is not a disowning of this authority of the sciences, an authority constructed and not without its own politics. Rather it is an appropriation of all sciences as always already ‘ours’.

Such discourses propose a divide between knowledge forms: native and ancient versus ‘western’ and modern, almost as though there are monolithic ‘native’ or ‘western’ beliefs (would ‘western belief’ be Catholic, Protestant or Eastern Orthodox?). Overlaps also occur even within attitudes of intolerance and offended sentiments: Saba Mahmood noted the same iconophilic strains within both religions:

the kind of relationship that many pious Muslims feel toward Muhammad, which was partly at stake in the Danish cartoon controversy, surely it is recognizable to scholars of Christianity (with its long and rich tradition of the Eucharist and Corpus Christi), Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and late Antiquity?

Mahmood went on to argue that we need to think (and speak)

critically about whether the sense of injury that derives from this sort of religiosity is translatable into a language of rights, and whether understanding this sense of injury is something worthy for the ethical and political life of a religiously diverse society.

The ‘language of rights’ is precisely what has been abandoned in toto with the rise of the language of hurt sentiments but also because in the era of mythic pasts and post-truth.

What counts as religion itself has been constructed in specific contexts and for particular reasons, notes Talal Asad:

It was late nineteenth-century anthropological and theological thought that rendered a variety of overlapping social usages rooted in changing and heterogeneous forms of life into a single immutable essence, and claimed it to be the object of a universal human experience called “religious”.

He further argued that when we speak of religions we need to ask ‘questions about what the definition includes and what it excludes – how, by whom, for what purpose, and so on’. These are questions, in our context of the widespread use of exclusionary rhetoric, we need to ask now for clearly, some humans can be sacrificed.

Several of these questions are the province of fields in the human sciences, intellectual history, even discourse studies and of course literature. Here we find the eschewing of hagiographies and instead a focus on histories of religious thought, complete with anthropological inquiry.

Also Read: Whither, in the Name of Religion, Goes the Voice of Reason?

‘Values’ and cultural change

The sociologist Max Weber noted:

Every increase of rationalism in empirical science increasingly pushes religion from the rational into the irrational realm; but only today does religion become the irrational or anti-rational supra-human power.

This categorisation of religion as ‘irrational’ moved religion into the realm of the private as well. But the World Values Survey is illustrative. For the 2017-2022 period, people of many countries agreed that religion was ‘very important’ to their daily lives. In terms of percentages, 37% of Americans agreed. Indonesia, Nigeria, Egypt and numerous countries showed more than 50% of the population agreeing. Only in the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Lithuania, South Korea, Iceland, Hungary, Denmark, Austria, Azerbaijan, Australia and a few other nations was this percentage less than 20%. In their comment on this ‘cultural map’, political scientists Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel noted two major dimensions of cross-cultural variation in the world: traditional values versus secular-rational values; survival values versus self-expression values. They defined Traditional values as

Emphasiz[ing] the importance of religion, parent-child ties, deference to authority and traditional family values. People who embrace these values also reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia and suicide. These societies have high levels of national pride and a nationalistic outlook.

They noted :

On the traditional/secular dimension, the United States ranks far below other rich societies, with levels of religiosity and national pride comparable with those found in some developing societies… The Swedes, the Dutch, and the Australians are closer to the cutting edge of cultural change than the Americans…

‘The cutting edge of cultural change’ is an apposite phrase because with the rise of the discourse of ancient traditions and their glories what is lost is the capacity for cultural change, unfitting our next generations for a rapidly changing world when they are asked to return to roots and supposedly stable values.

And yet, in the past, faced with crises and extreme events, even theologians have responded in interesting ways. One thinks of Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ (2015), with its subtitle, ‘on care for our common home’, in which he pronounced ‘Climate [is] a common good’, and the Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change (2015) as examples. Just as the scientists drew our urgent attention to the climate crisis, so did religious leaders. Calling for changes in the way we live – especially fossil fuel consumption – these tracts were attempting to effect cultural changes. They were not just spouting back-to-scriptures rhetoric, but actively promoting critical thinking and an environmental consciousness that is humanistic in spirit.

When cultural shifts that encourage superstition, and are decidedly discriminatory, emerge leading to extreme acts such as human sacrifices, the field that needs to respond swiftly is that of the liberal arts.

Pope Francis speaks to journalists aboard the papal plane on his flight back after visiting Canada, July 29, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Guglielmo Mangiapane

Knowledge shifts and critical thinking

For cultural change ‘critical thinking’ is indispensable. The language of rights, dignity and autonomy helps rethink what it means to be human, a citizen, a community. In Heidi Bostic’s pithy phrasing, humanities explore the ‘basic issues of meaning, purpose, and value’ and ‘fundamental questions at the heart of humanistic inquiry: questions that the humanities confront….Who are we and how ought we to live?’ Following from these, how have returns to mythic pasts, the designation of some people as nonpersons and disposable persons, are matters of concern for the Humanities because it concerns how we as a people ought to live.

Those sacrificed were treated as disposable humans, and this is where our myths have something to answer for: how did we retrieve beliefs that, in the age of science and democracy, enabled some to consign fellow humans to the category of the disposable? What have we imparted as frames of perception? How have we manufactured memory in terms of cultural heritage management that congeals the public imaginary around ‘us’ and ‘them’?

Such a management is the organisation of perception which can lead, as Diana Taylor argues about the collective refusal to observe the cruelties around us, to percepticide. If we see the recent acts as just ‘perversions’ or ‘superstition’ then we wilfully miss how a train of thought has now appeared, valorising myths and post-truth ‘facts’ as acceptable and even respectable, and which will at some point call forth expressions of this heinous sort as well.

It is not, as Sunny Kapikad noted, an isolated incident but a reflection of a larger malaise and cultural resurgence of a certain kind. In this, Kapikad echoes the oft-repeated comments that the 2004 Abu Ghraib tortures and torturers were not just kinky individuals but a product of the American system that normalises violence and racism. The context legitimises and valorises stories and practices that then produce extreme acts, unthinkable acts that destroy the Other human. It is how we perceive the Other that allows, sanctifies and necessitates the destruction of the Other.

And it is within the liberal arts, specifically literature, that we learn how to perceive the Other, with outsiderhood.

As we set about fragmenting the disciplines into diploma and certificate courses in the name of interdisciplinarity and flexibility, preventing the young from acquiring a solid foundation in any discipline, the capacity for critical thinking is eroded. Where sustained reflection, deep reading and diversity of scholarship – the basis of the Humanities – are necessary more than ever, what we are attempting is minimising detail, shortcuts into a discipline and superficial jargon usage. There is no need, apparently, to examine the plural and sometimes problematic histories of an idea or ideology, the subtexts of a discourse.

A nation that abandons reflection for trendy myths and catchy teaching programmes that refuse groundedness in concepts, frames of perception and (untrendy) ideas of rights, when public discourse turns on emotional truth and unverifiable myths, when disciplines like the liberal arts are rendered ineffectual systematically, atavistic practices such as Elanthoor will return.

Sometimes the death of a discipline that offers the last of the grand challenges to the way we live heralds the death of the idea(l) of a nation.

Kerala ‘Human Sacrifice’ Case Revives Calls for Effective Law, Promoting Critical Thinking

Besides calls for legislation, there are also discussions on the role of religious figures, political leaders, intellectuals and media in the spread of superstition.

Kerala’s shocking ‘human sacrifice’ case, where two women were brutally assaulted and murdered in the name of superstition, has once again revived calls for comprehensive action to address the menace of harmful and deceitful practices in the name of faith. 

On Tuesday, the Kerala police arrested three persons – one person described as a “psychopath and pervert” and a couple – after unearthing the murder of two women in a suspected practice of “black magic” and “human sacrifice”. 

Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans as part of a ritual, which some “black magic” practitioners falsely claim will bring material benefits. 

The murders were a result of the planning of a habitual offender – Muhammed Shafi alias Rasheed – who convinced a couple – Bhagawal Singh and Laila – that murdering a person would “please” the goddess and bring them “financial prosperity”. 

According to the police, Shafi and the couple brutally murdered two women – in separate instances, on in June and the other in September – at the couple’s house at Elanthoor in the southern district of Pathanamthitta. 

Rosly, 49, was killed in June and Padmam, 52, was killed in September. Both the women were lured and trapped by Shafi and taken to Singh’s house, where they were murdered and buried.

The primary findings of the police investigation revealed the continuing existence of dangerous and criminal practices in the name of faith in the state.

Murders for ‘prosperity’ 

According to the police probe so far, the killings took place because Shafi – against whom more than 10 cases including rape, theft and attempt to murder charges were registered – met Singh and Laila, who were willing to do anything to improve their financial condition. 

Singh and Laila were looking for ways to achieve economic prosperity. And Shafi convinced Singh that ‘human sacrifice’ would bring them what they want. Shafi was later paid by the couple for facilitating the ‘ritual’. 

Shafi used a fake ID on social media to establish contact with Singh. Shafi, who presented himself to Singh as a woman, said he knew one sorcerer named Rasheed. Later, Shafi arrived at Singh’s house as Rasheed.

The police revealed shocking details that have emerged from the probe so far. According to the investigators, Shafi and the couple severely assaulted their victims before they beheaded them and cut the dead bodies into pieces. They were later buried.

Shafi lured both Rosly and Padmam by offering them money. Both women were engaged in selling lottery tickets. Padmam was originally from Tamil Nadu. At the time of their murder, both the women were residing in Ernakulam, where Shafi, also a resident of the district, met them. 

The murders were unveiled following the police’s probe into one ‘missing complaint’ filed by Padmam’s relatives a couple of weeks ago. Padmam went missing on September 26. Earlier Rosly’s family had also filed a police complaint in August, weeks after she went missing in June.

Ernakulam city police commissioner C.H. Nagaraju briefs the media in connection with the Elanthoor human sacrifice case, in Kochi, October 12, 2022. Photo: PTI

Deceitful, harmful faith practices not rare in the state  

The murders for “faith” and “prosperity” attracted sharp condemnation from various corners, including the political leadership and religious/spiritual leaders.

Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, in a statement, said the twin murder shocked the human conscience. The chief minister also said the ongoing probe will bring everyone involved in the crime before the law. He added that the crime is a “challenge to civilised society” and pressed for “social awareness” to address such forms of violence. 

The state’s opposition leader V.D. Satheesan said the twin murders were “shocking”. Calling for an honest and just probe into the case, he also said had there been a “serious probe” into the first murder, the second murder, which took place three months later, could have been prevented.

P. Satheedevi, chairperson of the Kerala State Women’s Commission, said, “It is so frightening to see that brutal acts including human sacrifice are taking place in a society like ours, which boasts of high educational standards.”

However, deceitful and sometimes dangerous practices in the name of faith, often to get rid of economic woes and other difficult situations in life, are not rare in Kerala. Such practices continue to exist among sections of all the major religious communities in the state – Hindus, Muslims and Christians – even though reformists, both within and outside the religion have tried to eradicate them.

Recently, some Muslim groups launched a campaign against such practices after a minor girl died after being denied timely medical care for faith-related reasons.

Also Read: ‘No Self-Reliant India Without Freedom From Dogma, Superstitions’

Spiritual and religious leaders also unite in condemnation

Besides political leadership, some religious/spiritual leaders also strongly condemned the latest murders.

Swami Sandeepananda Giri, a well-known Hindu spiritual educator, said many in Kerala follow “numerous” forms of superstitious beliefs, such as buying ornaments on ‘Akshaya Tritiya’. “Unwanted rituals are planned and observed in the name of religion and faith,” he told The Wire. He said media platforms, such as newspapers, had a role in spreading superstitions in society.   

Responding to a question, Giri also said “everyone”, including political and religious leaders, has a role to play to address unwanted practices followed in the name of faith. 

“There is a famous quote from Plato: rulers should be philosophers. Why should rulers be philosophers? They should act as a role model in society. But, what happens if they themselves contribute superstitions? Unfortunately, our current prime minister himself is an example. He became an ‘inspiration’ in leading the public to different malpractices. This is a very saddening thing,” he said, in a possible reference to some public statements made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the pandemic. Quoting from the Bhagavad Gita, Giri said that influential people should be cautious in their actions because they could influence ordinary people.

Notably, the Kerala ‘human sacrifice’ incident has a man with a Muslim name as the key accused. He convinced a couple from another faith that they could live a better life if they killed other human beings. 

Muslim scholars view such killings and similar harmful ‘rituals’ as both ‘un-Islamic’ and deeply condemnable. 

Professor Shamsuddeen Palakkod, a senior Muslim scholar and community activist, said if religious and spiritual leaders begin to use their wisdom and knowledge on the “right path”, believers will be “saved” and will get rid of the evil practices like ‘human sacrifice’.

Quoting from the Qura’n (9:34), Palakkod said many spiritual leaders are actually misleading the faithful and gaining wealth. He said believers should realise there is “no space for superstition in real religion”. He said, “There is no original or fake sorcerer. Every sorcerer is fake.”

Some commentators also see the latest murders in the name of superstition as part of a larger social problem – the commercialisation of faith.

N.P. Chekkutty, a senior journalist and socio-political commentator, said religious leaders, political leaders, mass media and even intellectuals had a role in the spread of superstition in the society. He said money has become an important driving factor for all institutions, including religion, through globalisation which began in the 1990s. This has negatively influenced even religions and religious practices, he said. In most superstitious practices, the practitioner is paid quite well. In the latest twin murders too, Shafi was paid more than Rs 3 lakh by the couple, according to the police.  

Chekkutty said while influential “intellectuals” are interested only in literature and not in promoting scientific temper, the media too failed in this battle against superstition because they no longer promote “critical thinking”. “They do not even publish a letter from readers that is critical [of some dominant negative ideas],” he said.

Representative image. Illustration: The Wire

Laws to ban superstitious practices

Notably, a draft law meant to tackle “inhuman” practices and exploitation in the name of superstition has been waiting for the approval of the Kerala legislative assembly. 

The Kerala Prevention and Eradication of Inhuman Evil Practices, Sorcery and Black Magic Bill, 2019 was drafted and submitted to the state government three years ago. In light of the latest twin murders, reports say the government is likely to speed up the process to enact the law.

Some states have already enacted similar laws to address the social menace of such practices. The rationalist Narendra Dabholkar played a crucial role in Maharashtra adopting an Act which criminalised practices related to black magic, human sacrifices, the use of magic remedies to cure ailments and other such acts which may exploit superstitions. Dabholkar himself was murdered, allegedly by members of a radical right-wing group.

Terrifying stories of human sacrifices have been reported from different parts of the country in the past few years. Last year, a two-year-old baby was killed by family members in Uttar Pradesh. A woman from Telangana murdered her own child for a similar reason last year. And in 2018, the entire country was shocked by the gruesome tale that emerged from a house in Delhi’s Burari, where 11 members of a family died by suicide as part of a ritual. Activists had pointed out that thousands have lost their lives due to superstitious beliefs in the country in the recent past. 

Muhammed Sabith is a journalist and researcher. Twitter: @MuhemmadSabith.

Kerala: Main Accused Used ‘Baseless Fear’ of Couple for Human Sacrifice, Say Police

The police described Mohammed Shafi as a “pervert” who has been involved in many cases, including rapes, in the past. 

New Delhi: Mohammed Shafi, the prime accused in the human sacrifice case in which two women were allegedly murdered in the Pathanamthitta district of Kerala, masterminded the murders by using the “irrational fear” of the two other accused, the police said on Wednesday.

The police described Shafi as a “pervert” who has been involved in many cases, including rapes, in the past.

Shafi had used the irrational fear of the two other accused, a couple, for black magic and created a pretext for human sacrifice to settle their financial issues and bring prosperity to their life, Ernakulam city police commissioner, C. Nagaraju said.

A local court in Kochi on Wednesday remanded the trio to 14 days’ judicial custody after the police team produced them before it with a detailed remand report on the manner of the gruesome murders.

On Tuesday, police arrested the trio – Bhagaval Singh and his wife Laila and their associate Muhammad Shafi – for allegedly killing two women. The case pertains to the missing cases of one Padma and Roslin, who disappeared on two different dates from Elamkulam and Chalakudy respectively.

Nagaraju said the crime came to light during a probe to find Padma, who went missing on September 26 from Elamkulam near Kochi.

At a press meet, the police official said Shafi was initially reluctant to cooperate with the police, but when confronted with various pieces of evidence including the statement of the accused couple, he broke down.

Later, the details of Roslin’s death also came out. She went missing in June, he said.

“All we had was a CCTV visual of a lady getting in a car with Shafi. Nothing else. Police team took the scientific route, traced them to the house at Elanthoor, questioned the couple and the whole incident unfolded,” Nagaraju said.

The officer said the prime accused is a “pervert involved in sadistic pleasure” and all three accused had directly participated in the murder.

Singh got in touch with a fake profile on Facebook, ‘Sreedevi’, created by Shafi in 2019.

“Shafi met the couple as someone sent by ‘Sreedevi’. He will make up any kind of story, trap anyone and even in this case, he made a fake profile and trapped Singh,” Nagaraju said.

Ernakulam city police commissioner C.H. Nagaraju briefs the media in connection with the Elanthoor human sacrifice case, in Kochi, October 12, 2022. Photo: PTI

The police said they were analysing their Facebook details. He said in the Kadavanthra case, involving Padma, strangulation and gagging were involved before killing her.

However, in the Roslin case, she was murdered on the cot itself, police said.

The officer mentioned an earlier case against Shafi in which he raped a 75-year-old and injured her with a knife in various parts of her body.

“In the recent crime, the victims were injured in private parts. Basically he is a pervert involved in sadistic pleasure… causing injury, harm and death…The couple were under his influence. There are at least 10 cases against him in the last 15 years,” he said.

Asked about news reports that the trio was engaged in cannibalism, Nagaraju said that possibility was also being investigated but there was no evidence confirming it.

He said the prime accused manipulated the vulnerability of the couple and his main intention was not money, but sexual pleasure and sadism.

The Commissioner said both the murders happened after five in the evening and was also probing the possibility of the involvement of any other persons in the incident.

Nagaraju congratulated the DCP (law and order), S. Sasidharan, who was instrumental in identifying the crime and connecting the dots leading to the accused.

The two women, who earned their daily bread by selling lottery tickets, were allegedly sacrificed by the accused to settle the financial issues of the couple and bring prosperity in their life, police said.

The chopped body parts of the deceased were exhumed from the premises of the couple’s house at Elanthoor village in Pathanamthitta on Tuesday.

(With PTI inputs)

Kerala: Two Missing Women Killed in ‘Human Sacrifice’; Three Suspects Held

According to the police, the accused is a couple who believed in black magic and held the belief that ‘human sacrifice’ would bring prosperity to their lives.

New Delhi: Two women were allegedly sacrificed as part of black magic to bring prosperity to a village in the Pathanamthitta district of Kerala. Three people, including a couple, suspected to be involved in the crime, were taken into custody, police said here on Tuesday, October 11.

The two women, who had earned their daily bread selling lottery tickets on the streets here, were allegedly sacrificed by the accused to settle their financial issues and bring prosperity to their life, police said.

Expressing shock over the murders, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said only those who are sick in the head could commit such crimes. One of the accused, Bhagaval Singh, has been associated with the ruling CPI (M) in the state.

“Such black magic and witchcraft rituals could only be seen as a challenge to civilised society,” he said in a statement.

According to the police, the victims, said to be in their near 50s, were natives of Kadavanthara and Kalady. They had gone missing in September and June this year and the eventual probe led to the story of human sacrifice, they said.

The body parts of the victims were cut into pieces before being buried in two locations at Elanthoor village in Thiruvalla in Pathanamthitta, they said quoting the confession by the accused.

The arrested persons were identified as Bhagaval Singh, reportedly a local massage therapist, his wife Laila, both natives of Thiruvalla; and Rasheed alias Muhammand Shafi, a Perumbavoor native, who was suspected to have lured and brought the now-deceased women to the house of the couple where the sacrifice was said to have been done.

“During our investigation regarding the missing woman from Kadavanthara, we came to know that she was killed in that couple’s house in Thiruvalla and her body was buried after being cut into pieces there. It was a human sacrifice for the financial benefit of that couple,” Kochi city police commissioner Nagaraju Chakilam told PTI.

On further interrogation, it was also found that this was not the lone case but another woman was also allegedly sacrificed similarly in the same house in June.

“It was also at the same house…by the same couple…and the woman was brought by the same person. The third person had not only played an agent role (in both these cases) but was also instrumental in getting this done. He convinced the couple that this should be done,” he said adding that the bodies were not in one shape as they had been made into pieces and buried.

“Further details can be divulged after exhumation and inquest,” said IG (south zone) P Prakash.

“Prima facie, it was a case of murder for financial gains through black magic and human sacrifice. The police will look into all aspects and details,” he added.

Both the women were reportedly lured by Rasheed under the pretext of acting in porn films and promising to pay them a hefty amount as remuneration. But police were yet to confirm this.

When contacted, a senior police officer said how the victims were brought to Singh’s village house by Rasheed was another story.

“This case has several aspects and dimensions to be probed. How they were brought to the crime scene has a slight immoral angle,” he told PTI without going into any further details.

A police team later brought the accused to the suspected crime scene at Elanthoor with the faces covered to collect evidence.

Steps were also on to exhume the bodies of the women at the locations where their alleged body parts were buried as per the confession of the accused.

Meanwhile, Vijayan said the police had made it clear that the murders were done as part of superstition.

“Vigilant investigation of a missing case by the police has led to the unfolding of the twin murder,” he said, adding that abducting and killing people for wealth and superstitious beliefs is a crime that is beyond imagination in a state like Kerala.

Stating that police would take stringent measures against the guilty, the chief minister also urged everyone in society to come forward to identify such evil practices and bring them to public notice.

Leader of Opposition in the State Assembly V.D. Satheesan said the latest incidents would force all people, who were proud to be part of a civilised society, to hang their heads in shame.

“Another life would have been saved had there been a serious investigation by the police into the first missing complaint itself. A detailed investigation needs to be conducted to find out whether more murders have taken place in the state on account of witchcraft,” he added.

Without directly mentioning media reports that Singh, one of the accused, was a local activist of the ruling CPI (M), Satheesan said it was also significant that one of the killers was an active worker of a political party which claims to be “progressive”.

“Therefore, an honest and fair investigation should be ensured without any external interference,” the Congress leader added.

BJP state chief K. Surendran alleged that one of the killers was a CPI (M) activist and there was also the intervention of radical religious groups in the crime.

“The incident stands as a question mark in front of the political, administrative and police leadership of Kerala who reacts to any minor incident happening in any part of the country,” he said.

“The accused was said to have held significant posts in the Marxist party in the area. As per the local information, he is currently holding charge of the party’s karshaka sangham. You can also see his Facebook posts praising chief minister Vijayan and health minister Veena George during their poll victories,” he further charged.

A fair investigation into the incident should be conducted, the leader added.

Several poetry enthusiasts, who write in Malayalam and share their work online, expressed shock that the chief accused Singh was known to them over social media. Singh, many recalled, shared poetry and various posts supporting CPI (M), according to News Minute.

(With PTI inputs)

Andhra Couple Kills Two Adult Daughters Believing They Will Be ‘Reborn in a Day’

Incidentally, both parents are educationists, serving in local educational institutions. 

New Delhi: A couple from Andhra Pradesh’s Madanapelle in Chittoor district allegedly killed their two young daughters in their twenties under the belief that they would be reborn in a day. Strikingly, the parents are both educationists, employed in local educational institutions.

Telugu language reports say Padmaja and Purushottam Naidu were highly superstitious and were known for carrying out elaborate rituals at home. Padmaja, has been working as the principal and correspondent at a local college in the town, while Purushottam is employed as a vice-principal at a women’s degree college, according to local reports.

According to Madanapalle deputy superintendent of police, Ravi Manohara Chari, the girls were murdered by their parents late on Sunday night.

While the older daughter Alekhya (27) was a student at the Indian Institute of Forest Management in Bhopal, the younger daughter Saidivya (22) was a Bachelor’s of Business Administration (BBA) graduate and was enrolled at the A.R. Rahman Music School in Mumbai. Both daughters had been living with their parents in Madanapalle since the lockdown last year, according to a report by The News Minute. 

The parents, influenced by various godmen and drawn into superstitious rituals, are said to have been performing pujas since the outbreak of COVID-19. They had allegedly remained home-bound and not let maids, workers or relatives enter the house.

It was only after hearing screams from the house that neighbours alerted the police on Sunday night.

The couple had tried to prevent police from entering the house initially. After making their way into the house, police found one of the girls dead in the puja room, and the other in a different room with puja material and a red cloth scattered around. The police, according to their preliminary investigation, suspect that the girls may have been killed using dumbbells.

“During our preliminary investigation, the couple seems to be highly superstitious as they asked us to keep the bodies in the house for a day stating that their daughters would come back to life,’’ a New Indian Express report quoted the police official as saying.

The parents told the investigating officials that they had received a divine message to offer their daughters as ‘human sacrifice’ as ‘Kal Yuga’ was going to end on Sunday night, when both girls were killed. The girls, according to the parents, would come back to life the next day, with the dawn of ‘Satya Yuga’.

The Madanapalle police shifted the dead bodies to a local government hospital for postmortem, and the couple has been taken into custody for questioning.

Holding His Ground Against the Sand Raiders of Tamil Nadu

S. Mugilan confronts the state’s mining mafias, even as officials and activists lose their lives in defence of its rivers and beaches.

S. Mugilan confronts the state’s mining mafias, even as officials and activists lose their lives in defence of its rivers and beaches.

Queue of trucks waiting to be loaded with mined sand. Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu.

Queue of trucks waiting to be loaded with mined sand. Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu. Credit: Sibi Arasu

Chennimalai, Tamil Nadu: On a night in November 2008, S. Mugilan and a few of his friends headed home from putting up posters around the town of Namakkal. Their posters demanded that the government shut down a paper factory that had allegedly polluted 10,000 acres of land in the district.

It was 3am when they found themselves surrounded by about 70 men armed with kadaparais (crowbars) and aruvals (curved machetes). The gang left Mugilan and his comrades with injuries which required weeks of hospitalisation. The attackers were never identified, though Mugilan presumes they were hired by the factory owner. Still, Mugilan triumphed. Four months later, the factory was closed. Since then, Mugilan says, all large factories in the district implement pollution controls.

S. Mugilan at home. Chennimalai, Tamil Nadu.

S. Mugilan at home. Chennimalai, Tamil Nadu. Credit: Sibi Arasu

Mugilan, now 49, has taken on polluters in Tamil Nadu for more than two decades. He has had victories: shutting down a Coke factory in Perundurai, closing a polluting textile-dyeing plant in Erode, and organising major protests against a nuclear power-plant on the coast. In one especially shocking case, he helped expose granite miners who tried to shore up business by offering narabali – human sacrifice.

He has had many failures, too, and the one struggle which is always ongoing – his fight against Tamil Nadu’s sand-mining mafia.

Questions of sand           

At his modest home in Chennimalai, a temple-town on the banks of the Noyyal River, Mugilan explained how he left his job as an engineer in the state public works department (PWD) to begin a life as an activist. That was in 1995, when a textile-dyeing factory in Erode was found to be polluting the Noyyal.

A view of the earth mover used to load sand. Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu.

A view of the earth mover used to load sand. Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu. Credit: Sibi Arasu

“Things came to a head when a schoolgirl went in the river to bath and came out with skin burns,” Mugilan said. “We collected ten lakh signatures asking for the factory to be shut, and collected one rupee from each person who signed. We organised large protests in Erode town as well. Finally the authorities woke up and shut the factory. This victory, after three years of incessant effort, was a great learning experience.”

It was around this time that Mugilan faced his first confrontations with the sand-mining mafia. Tamil Nadu has the second-longest coastline of any state in India, stretched over 1,076 kilometres. Ninety-five rivers cut across it, and at least 17 major river-basins fall within its borders.

All this river and beach sand was not too heavily exploited until the real estate boom of the 1990s, which increased demand for sand exponentially. The state government estimates that between 5,500 and 6,000 truckloads of sand (each about 200 cubic feet) are mined in Tamil Nadu every day. Mugilan puts the number much higher – at 90,000 truckloads or more. He also disputes the PWD claim that the market rate for sand is Rs 7,000-8,000 per truckload, saying it is actually Rs 20,000-Rs 30,000, and much more when trucked out of state.

A truck driver loads sand onto his truck. Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu.

A truck driver loads sand onto his truck. Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu. Credit: Sibi Arasu

This adds up to tremendous profits, through rampant and often illegal sand-mining. State laws prohibit the mining of more than five vertical feet of sand, and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change stipulates that mining in many quarries only be done manually. Yet heavy equipment, like sand mining dredges is commonly used. Mining has led to major rivers, such as the Thamirabarani and the Palar, sinking 30 feet below ground level.

“The sad reality is that the mining stops only when the sand has been completely extracted,” said Mugilan. “So when the monsoons come along, there is no sand to retain water in the rivers and it flows straight to the sea, as if through a hose. The groundwater levels keep dropping, and the once-glorious river systems, which were the lifeline for the state’s agriculture, are in pathetic condition.”

Orders from above

The reason rampant, illegal sand-mining continues, Mugilan alleges, is because of the complicity of state politicians. “For every truckload that is mined, legal or illegal, we estimate that Rs 200 goes to a close aide of the chief minister,” he said. That would work out to more than Rs 1.8 crore to that aide alone, every day.

In his 2014 book, Thathu Manal Kollai (The Stealing of Beach Sand) Mugilan claims that the state’s biggest miner of beach sand is S. Vaikundarajan, the chairman of VV Minerals, India’s leading exporter of industrial minerals. Among other interests, Vaikundarajan also owns a Tamil news channel, and has close ties to ministers in the ruling party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. In 2013, his name appeared in an investigation into illegal sand mining in Tuticorin district, which is worth Rs 96 thousand crore, according to the Economic Times.

Mugilan says there is so much money in sand that regulation is practically futile. The officials tasked with preventing illegal mining are in the third or fourth tier of the bureaucracy, such as village administrative officers (VAOs) and revenue department (RD) officials. But illegal miners can deal directly with politicians and officials at the top.

“VAOs and RD officials who are supposed to act against the illegal miners are either paid off or – if they turn out to be honest – targeted through other means,” Mugilan said.

A local women sells food to the truck drivers who are in queue. Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu.

A local women sells food to the truck drivers who are in queue. Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu. Credit: Sibi Arasu

While small-time miners are routinely arrested, he added, the “big fish” are allowed to continue unchecked, or even assisted by state officials. “To oppose them would be career suicide, and in extreme situations, even life threatening.”

Threatened over sand

Although it is poorly documented, anecdotal accounts and scattered reports indicate that numerous activists and government officials in Tamil Nadu have been injured or killed for opposing sand and granite-mining mafias.

A report in Frontline details how an 81-year-old retired teacher, Sam Devasagayam, was hacked to death in 2014 while campaigning against illegal sand mining in the Thamirabarani River. The same year, a 43-year-old police constable, G. Kanakaraj, was run over by a truck carrying illicitly mined sand. A government official and four colleagues also survived being rammed by a truck carrying sand. Two years earlier, 24-year-old Satheesh Kumar was standing guard against sand mining in the Nambiyar River when he was killed by a speeding truck. In Madurai district, a farmer’s hand was chopped off for refusing to part with his land for granite mining. These cases are just a few of the many more recorded and unrecorded deaths and injuries.

It can take up to three days for a truck to reach the front of the queue, load sand and take off. Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu.

It can take up to three days for a truck to reach the front of the queue, load sand and take off. Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu. Credit: Sibi Arasu

“I can think of at least four government officials who have been killed because of their stringent positions against sand mining in the last decade or so,” anti-sand-mining activist S. Amudhan told The Wire. “Most of the attacks are attributed to negligent driving or road accidents. The connection between their efforts to curb sand mining and their deaths are hardly ever laid out.”

Mugilan said he knows of at least 20 people, including activists, villagers, and officials, who have lost their lives over sand and granite mining. “These deaths are seldom reported since the regional journalists too are targeted. When the entire system is in their [the mining mafia’s] hands, it’s sometimes difficult to get the word out,” he said.

It is not just opponents of illegal mining who have lost their lives, either. Last year, a state government probe into a granite quarry in Madurai district found that at least 12 people had been offered as narabali there. The victims appeared to be mentally challenged people abducted from neighbouring regions in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, and used as human sacrifices between 1999 and 2003. The exhumed remains included one of a small baby. The owner of the quarry, a granite baron named P.R. Palanichamy, was found to have ordered the sacrifices, allegedly to improve business.

In 2012, U. Sagayam, the district collector in Madurai, had blown the lid off 175 granite quarries that Palanichamy and his firm, PRP Granites, were running illegally. Sagayam’s investigation, done with the assistance of Mugilan and other activists, estimated that PRP Granites illegally mined Rs 16 crore worth of granite across the District.

Within days of submitting his report, Sagayam was transferred out of the district. He now serves as vice-chairman of a state-run initiative to promote research in science and technology — a huge demotion from the position of Madurai district collector. In September 2014, however, the Madras high court appointed Sagayam as a special officer to investigate mining in the state. It was this probe that uncovered the human sacrifices.

Having witnessed situations like this, Mugilan has gotten used to the threats on his own life, and to his family. “My wife now just says ‘You can do what you want,’ when someone calls to threaten us,” he said. “Both she and my son accept that what we’re trying to goes beyond just our family. We are fighting the greatest monopolies and power-mongers in our region. Threats are inevitable. The point is to keep on going.”

Mugilan and his wife, Poongkodi, at their home. Chennimalai, Tamil Nadu.

Mugilan and his wife, Poongkodi, at their home. Chennimalai, Tamil Nadu. Credit: Sibi Arasu

After the massive protests against the coastal nuclear power plant at Koodankulam, Mugilan was charged with sedition and imprisoned for four months. It made him a prominent face of environmental movements in Tamil Nadu. Now, he says, any direct attack on him will not go unnoticed by media and civil society.

“So the way I see it, the only reason people like Vaikundarajan have let me be is that if something happens to me, he’ll be held directly responsible. It really can’t be anything else,” Mugilan said.

What keeps him fighting is his leftist ideology and his surprising optimism about the future. “For me an environmental issue is not just about saving the environment,” he said. “I feel that causing damage to land and natural resources is an attack on the Tamil people as much as on its ecosystems.”

“When I was growing up,” Mugilan recalls, “We could take the water right out of the Noyyal River and drink. We used to play in the river for hours, spend so much time there. My son can never experience that. But through our efforts, maybe we can bring the region back to how it was, or at least a semblance of it.”

Sibi Arasu is an independent journalist based in Chennai. He tweets @sibi123. A version of this article first appeared on mongabay.org.