Background
The 'Committee to Combat Banamati and Related Violence' was established to fight the recent spate of killings related to sorcery and black magic in South India. Banamati / Chillangi / Chetabadi are the names for Witchcraft or Sorcery in the region.
The Committee has all the IHEU Member organisations in the region as members, as well as a large number of social organisations.
We filed a complaint with the State Human Rights Commission whose Chairman ordered the Director General of Police to give a report and the Chief Secretary as well has to respond to our complaint. 2500 women killed in 15 years as per official statistics; Andhra Pradesh which Presidents Clinton and Bush visited as well as Bill Gates as one of the technology capitals of India is second in the list.
The Committee then met with leaders of the Council for Science and Technology who promised to work with us and provide assistance.
Since then more people have been killed, and many calls received on the helpline that we announced: there are many who fear they will be killed and did not know who to turn to. There are many who think they are the victims of black magic.
It is like a disease and is spreading.The Committee met with the Director General of Police Mr. Aravinda Rao who has promised all possible assistance at the ground level and also funding assistance if we were to take some travelling troops of artists and psychologists and psychitrists and anti-superstition activists to the problem spots.
While the police are arresting people after the event, and acting promptly as well, the problem is not one of law and order alone.
-4 days ago an old man called Niranjan was stoned to death in Mahboobnagar district. - 2 days ago near Suryapet a 'sorcerer' was beaten up badly.
- Yesterday 2 people had their teeth knocked out in Nalgonda district while being conscious - so they can no longer chant their mantras effectively.
We decided to raise the level of awareness and also to visit the village where Mr. Niranjan was stoned to death 4 days ago because someone fell sick and they suspected he was behind it.
We organised a party of people (10 of us) to go to Chennaram village, some 4 and a half hours away by car from Hyderabad. Some 15 press and media representatives came with us.
Yesterday
It was a desperately sad situation that we encountered.
Niranjan was a Dalit and the situation of his widow and her grief was heart rending. No one, till we went there, had even consoled her.
Who would not weep when she said, "Sir, they told me that when they were hitting him, my husband even offered to get the sick person treated in the hospital, but they did not listen to him. My two sons were warned they would be killed if they came anywhere near - and they were driven away. They ran away with the kerosene that the villagers got to burn their father with. But they stoned my husband, and hit him,
అండ్ it seems in the end they even steppedon his throat to check whether he was alive". She collapsed, weeping. Desperate, not understanding why her loved one was killed. He had never spoken of sorcery himself in his entire life till two days before he was killed, she said.
There were at least 400 people in the village - not even one stopped or attempted to stop the stoning. One said he thought 'it was people from a different caste, why should we bother'. We later learnt that his father was one of the accused.
Some of the vilagers accompanied us as we were gathering information. We could see that the villagers were unmoved by her plight - afterall, they were unmoved by the old man's cries for help when he was beaten and paraded in the village and then stoned to death after being tied to a tree next to the village Hall (Panchayat office). Niranjan was accused of having caused the death of a relative through his spells. It did not occur to those who were beating him and stoning him (they were Dalits too) that if he could not save himself from their blows he could not possibly have caused the death of another person. Apart from meeting the victims family and the villagers, we organised an anti-superstition demonstration (Sri Chandraiah and Sri Vikram), went to the village Mayor's home (called Sarpanch. Under the system of reservation the wife is the Sarpanch but in reality her husband Chukka Reddy acts as the sarpanch!) to demand what she did in her official capacity.
వే then met with the Circle Inspector (CI) Mr. Kishen, apart from offering a token assistance to the family. A Police party of 5 armed personnel provided escort - in another village a few weeks ago, the Police had to run for their lives when the villagers attacked them. In another
village a village Mayor was badly beaten up when he tried to prevent punishment of a sorcerer.
Following the meeting with the Circle Inspector, we feel reassured that the guilty (not just the three who were arrested, but also those who were instigators; the Sarpanch's husband had no powers to convene a meeting to try Niranjan, in the first place) will be brought to book. As it is the murder of a Dalit, there is automatic compensation that they will receive from the government and some relief.
In the police station the Inspector of Police summoned one of the accused who freely admits to the murder. He recounted what happened, and what he did. No remorse or emotion. All of them are/were agricultural labour.
Here are some sample press clippings of the half a dozen stories - the photos will tell some of the story. The visit was physically possible thanks to assistance by Sri Lakshman Reddy,Coordinator of the Committee, K.V.R. Reddy
of IHEU MO Manava Vikasa Vedika. Sri Anjaneyulu of Disha, a Humanist Dalit organisation which is supported by IHEU, and Sri Veeraswamy of Spoorthy, (he was at the London Untouchability conference) helped in organising the visit.
It is no surprise that the local Dalit MLA did not think fit to visit
di victims since the crime!
No other politicians have come forward either. Dead people have no votes and rarely Dalits can vote freely in such remote places. No Dalit is allowed into
that village's temple which was witness to his murder. Perhaps some of the villages' dalits sat on
a chair publicly in the centre of the village for the first time, at our insistence.
In brief, we found the prevalence of old animosities, a village deeply divided along caste lines, hopeless ignorance, liquor problem with illicit liquor being sold (Niranjan was plied with liquor for two days before being killed) and a complete lack of humanity amongst the villagers to be the context which allowed Sri Niranjan to be so mercilessly beaten and killed. Mr. Niranjan's sons have been threatened as well (by a Muslim; it is not all about caste, it is mostly about ignorance and about criminals), and the names of those intimidators have also been given to the police.
Yes, this is in India, in 2010. If you feel like weeping, you must. At least some of us have to remain human.
Babu Gogineni
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