An elderly Indian woman accused of practising witchcraft has been stripped naked and beheaded by villagers in the state of Assam, police say.<\/p>\n
They said that 63-year-old Purni Orang had been blamed for illness in the tribal settlement.<\/p>\n
Seven people, including two women, have been arrested over her killing.<\/p>\n
Police in Assam say nearly 90 people, mostly women, have been beheaded, burnt alive or stabbed to death after such accusations over the last six years.<\/p>\n
Branding women as witches is particularly prevalent among tribal communities and tea plantation workers in the state.<\/p>\n
People in a village in Sonitpur district were falling sick, and some of them “blamed Purni Orang for their condition”, local police official Samad Hussain told BBC Hindi.<\/p>\n
“After that they branded her a witch and killed her,” Mr Hussain said.<\/p>\n
In October, an Indian athlete Debjani Bora was severely beaten after being branded a witch in Assam.<\/p>\n
Experts say superstitious beliefs are behind some of these attacks, but there are occasions when people – especially widows – are targeted for their land and property.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An elderly Indian woman accused of practising witchcraft has been stripped naked and beheaded by villagers in the state of Assam, police say. They said that 63-year-old Purni Orang had been blamed for illness in the tribal settlement. Seven people, including two women, have been arrested over her killing. Police in Assam say nearly 90 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":136409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-136405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=136405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/136409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=136405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=136405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=136405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}