Agartala: Tripura Police on Tuesday night exhumed the body of a woman who was allegedly lynched by villagers on suspicion of practising witchcraft in West Tripura district.
The incident occurred on October 26 at Manchar Kobra village under Sidhai Police Station, officials said.
The deceased has been identified as Nanda Rani Debbarma. Police said the woman was buried shortly after her death in what appeared to be an attempt to destroy evidence.
The exhumation was conducted in the presence of an executive magistrate.
Superintendent of Police (West) Namit Pathak said four to five villagers are suspected to have been directly involved in the assault that led to her death. “The accused have been identified and efforts are underway to trace them. All of them are absconding at present,” the SP said.
According to preliminary findings, the woman had been ailing for some months and was occasionally reported to behave erratically, which fuelled rumours of witchcraft among the villagers.
Her husband, Magrai Debbarma, told police that some residents had recorded videos accusing his wife and a few other women of performing witchcraft. “She had been unwell for a while and sometimes acted strangely, but those acts were misinterpreted,” he said.
The woman’s son alleged that his mother was beaten to death by a mob. Following the incident, her sister lodged a formal complaint at Sidhai Police Station.
A senior police officer said the exhumed body will be sent for post-mortem examination to aid the investigation.
The incident has raised concern among local rights groups, who have demanded strong action against superstition-driven violence in rural areas of the state.
Related
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘609578899588292’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
