India ‘witch doctor’ sentenced to death for beheading

Police find the child’s headless skeleton in Raigarh district

AFP

April 16, 2013

Raipur: An Indian “witch doctor” who beheaded an 11-year-old boy and offered the head as a sacrifice to a goddess to improve his fortunes has been sentenced to death, police said on Tuesday.

A local court in Chhattisgarh state in central India convicted 32-year-old Dilip Rathia on Monday of murder and sentenced him to hang, police said.

“We proved the man beheaded the boy and his head was offered to the local goddess to obtain better luck,” investigating officer Praful Thakur told AFP by telephone.

The case, which highlights the persistence of occult beliefs in remote areas, came to light when police found the child’s headless skeleton in the tribal-dominated village of Barpali in Raigarh district, 195km northeast of state capital Raipur.

Forensic tests proved the skeleton was that of an 11-year-old boy named Praveen who disappeared in February 2012 while visiting a village fair, Thakur said.

Police, acting on a tip-off, raided the home of a man said by locals to be a “witch doctor” where they found the child’s head.

The man was “practising witchcraft” and “was convicted on charges of murder, hiding evidence and giving false information to conceal the offence”, local police official Rahul Bhagat told AFP.

Human sacrifices in India usually occur in poorer areas where some people fear and revere practitioners of so-called black magic.

The victims are ritually killed by witch doctors to please or appease deities.

In a recent widely-publicised case of suspected child sacrifice, the bodies of a two-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl were found at a home in the industrial town of Bhilai in Chhattisgarh in November 2010.

Seven months before that, the decapitated body of a factory worker was found in a temple in the eastern state of West Bengal.

'Witch doctor' gets death penalty for beheading boy

IndiaTimes.com

April 17, 2013

RAIPUR: Considering human sacrifice of a child as a rarest of rare case, a trial court in Raigarh district of Chhattisgarh has sentenced to death a 'witch doctor' who beheaded an 11-year-old boy as a sacrifice to a goddess to improve his luck.

Raigarh's additional district and sessions judge Ashok Kumar Sahu on Monday convicted the accused Dilip Rathia (32) on charges of murder of a boy identified as Praveen and sentenced him to death.

According to the prosecution, the headless skeleton of the boy was found at tribal village Barpali and subsequent investigations revealed that the accused beheaded the boy in February 2012 and offered his head to a goddess so that he could become lucky. Subsequently, the police raided the house of Rathia and found the child's head.

Apart from the charges of murder, the court also convicted him for destruction of evidence and giving false information to conceal the crime.