An account of the blood-curdling violence that groups of men become complicit with in their fear of women with power
The silence that fell on the night of August 7, 2015 in the Kanjiya-Maraitoli settlement of Mandar still echoes outside almost every house of the colony seven years later. Behind the silence lies the story of five women murdered here on that day, after being accused of being dayan/bisahi (witches). Even now, the locals are hesitant to talk about the incident.
The Mandar block’s headquarters lies about 40 km away from Jharkhand’s capital, Ranchi. From there, you turn left and proceed about 1.5 km on the Kalikaran road to reach Kanjiya Maraitoli. After taking a trail and then some paved and mud roads, I reach the Adivasi-dominated settlement of about 75 houses and see very few men on the roads.
The lack of government-backed ‘development’ is evident from the dirty water flowing in the middle of the road and flimsy huts on both sides. In the middle of the colony, on the right, one can see Dhumkudiya, a house where the Adivasi community gathers for meetings and public events. This is where the five women were dragged to from their houses, one by one, on that fateful night and mercilessly attacked with sticks, stones and axes until they died.
About 10 yards away from the Dhumkudiya, there is another house with a mud-tile roof, where I come across a group of five men, sitting and chatting. They include 45-year-old Sannu Oraon, who has spent four years in prison in relation to the murders.
Oraon claims to be innocent. He says he did not kill anyone or raise sticks or batons. However, he nonchalantly accepts that he was part of the murdering mob. On why he joined the mob, he says: “There were five women from our own village who were being termed dayans (witches). I was already asleep that night; it was around 9-10 pm. As I woke up, I saw a crowd. Everyone was leaving their house to join the lynching. Even people who did not hit them were part of the crowd. I was forced to join the mob because it was a collective village matter. Had I not joined, they could have killed me. I joined out of fear.”
The chilling fraternal bonding of the men against these women becomes evident when Oraon says, “In the morning, when the police came to arrest the perpetrators, the entire village united and said , ‘We have killed them together, arrest all of us.’ I was one of those who courted arrest. The people who actually killed them were relatives of the victim. My nephew and I were charged with murder. My nephew was acquitted but I was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Currently, I am out on bail.” According to Oraon, on August 8, 2015, the day after the murders, the entire village united to save those who led the killings and courted arrest.
Johan Oraon, 62, is also chatting in the same group. Johan had testified against Sannu in court, because two of the victims of the lynching were his mother (Ratiya Oraon, aged 80) and younger sister (Tetri Oraon, 40). Johan admits that Sannu did not take part in the violence but says he testified against the latter in court along with the others because the entire village had claimed responsibility for the killings.
When asked if he tried to save his mother and sister from the mob, Johan says, “Forty people had surrounded my house. They broke the door, dragged them out and started beating them indiscriminately with batons, calling them witches. They told me they would kill me too if I protested. I was surrounded and prevented from coming out. What could I do or say? I could only watch helplessly as they crushed their heads with rocks.”
Johan says that land is the root cause of his mother and sister’s murders, as they had already been threatened over it. He says, “My sister was a widow. She did not have children, so she stayed with my mother. The sons of our cousin had been demanding land from my mother to build a house but she had refused. This had angered them and they used to threaten us. But we had not imagined that they would kill them. Even a day before the incident, they were drunk and arrived at our place to attack us.” In Jharkhand, most of the victims of the murders committed over allegations of witchcraft (dayan/bisahi) are either women or the elderly and one of the main causes is land disputes.
Both elements are evident in the Maraitoli incident. According to the police, three separate FIRs had been filed in the case. Case numbers 89/15, 90/15 and 91/15 show that 50,48 and 47 people have been charged respectively in the FIRs under IPC sections 147, 148, 149, 452, 341, 323, 324, 325, 302, 354, 120B and sections 3/4/5 of the Jharkhand Prevention of Witch Practices Act. In 2016, charge sheets were filed against 43 people in each of the cases. According to a subsequent report, 11 people were sentenced to life imprisonment, while 28 accused were acquitted.
Joseph Premchand is the mukhiya (head) of the Kanjiya panchayat, elected for the third time straight. He was informed of the lynching incident by the administration at midnight. He reached Maraitoli immediately. Premchand claims that the women were killed between 9 and 10 pm but the murders were planned in the evening itself. Johan Oraon agrees with this timeline. The spot where the women were killed is merely 1.5 km away from the police station and patrols often pass through the area. It remains a mystery how the police had no inkling of the plot. The Mandar incident grabbed headlines not just in Jharkhand but also at the national and international levels and raised serious questions about the government’s claims of women empowerment.
In the dayan/bisahi killings, the role of ojha-guni (shamans) and superstitions is also significant, apart from land disputes. The Maraitoli murders also included this angle. Premchand says: “In the Adivasi community, people strongly believe in ojhas for treatment through jhaad-phunk (shamanic practices). Whenever someone falls sick in the village, they go to the shaman for treatment. Sometimes, the shaman says something like: ‘The house towards your east is your enemy.’ Then the village starts suspecting the residents of that particular house of witchcraft. It was the same in Maraitoli. Before the incident, a child fell sick and was diagnosed with pneumonia when he was taken to the hospital. Instead of getting him treated there, his family members brought him home. The child died. After his last rites, people gathered and declared a woman to be the witch who had caused the boy’s death. Thereafter, they killed three women (Madni Toppo aged 60, Etwariya Khalko, 55, and Jacinta Toppo, 60), followed by a mother and daughter from another house.”
Premchand says that the number of people directly involved in the murders was around 15-20, but later they gathered all five bodies in one place and summoned the entire village, asking them to hit the bodies with sticks and rocks. The colony’s residents went on to do this and crushed the corpses’ heads. This was carried out so that nobody would complain to the police or testify against the others.
Today, the villagers quietly agree that the dayan murders were wrong; they should not have happened. They also hold the ojha-gunis responsible for them. They say, “For Adivasis, it is the bhagats (shamans) who serve as doctors. In the name of treatment, they first earn chickens, goats, money, and then say whatever pleases them. Once they declare someone a dayan, people start mistrusting that person. However, now the trust in shamans is decreasing. if anyone falls sick, we now take them straight to the doctor. “
According to the mukhiya and villagers, the police had arrested around 50 people from the village for the crime. A 24-hour police picket was established in the village on the day after the incident and remained until 2020. The mukhiya says that by now, all the accused have been released from prison: some of them are on bail, while others have been acquitted.
(This appeared in the print edition as "The Cowardice of Covetousness")
Sunny Sharad is a Jharkhand-based journalist and founder member of followup news