In India’s remote
northern villages it feels as if little has changed. The communities
remain forgotten and woefully undeveloped, with low literacy and abject
poverty.
They are
conditions that for decades have bred superstition and a deep-rooted
belief in the occult.
The village
of Barha in the state of Uttar Pradesh is only a three - hour car drive
from the capital Delhi. Yet here evil medieval practices have made their
ugly presence known. I was led by locals to a house that is kept under
lock and key. They refuse to enter it.
‘Peering
through the window bars you can see the eerie dark room inside, with
peeling posters of Hindu gods adorning the walls and bundles of discarded
bed clothes. In one corner is the evidence we had come to find: blood
- splattered walls and stained bricks.
It is
the place where a little boy’s life was ritually sacrificed. Those
who tortured and killed Akash Singh did so in a depraved belief - that
the boy’s death would offer them a better life.
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In many parts of
northern India, tantrics play on people’s fears and superstitions
to perpetrate such atrocities as child sacrifice. |
“The
woman who did this was crazed,” the villagers say. “Akash was friends
with all our children... We still cannot believe what happened here.”
Akash’s distraught mother discovered her
son’s mutilated body.
The family was
told he was lured away with sweets and begged his captors to set him free.
“First
they cut out his tongue,” his grandmother Harpyari told me. “Then
they cut off his nose, then his ears. They chopped off his fingers.
They killed him slowly. ”The woman who abducted Akash lived just a
few doors away. She claimed to be suffering from terrible nightmares
and visions.
It was
then she turned for guidance to a tantric, or holy man. It was under
his instruction that she brutally sacrificed the boy - offering
his blood and remains to the Hindu goddess of destruction.
There
are temples across India that are devoted to the goddess. Childless
couples, the impoverished and sick visit to pray that she can cure them.
Animal
sacrifice is central to worship - but humans have not been temple victims
since ancient times.
We were
met with a hostile reception at the temple in Meerut.
The high
priest did not want us to see the ritual slaughter. Tantrics like him
clearly have an overwhelming grip on their followers.
Often
they are profiting from people’s fears. In extreme cases others have
instructed their followers to kill.
S Raju
a journalist with a leading newspaper, has been reporting on child
sacrifice cases since 1997 in western Uttar Pradesh. He has reported
on 38 similar cases.
In one
incident he says a tantric told a young man that if he hanged and killed
a small boy and lit a fire at his feet the smoke from the
ritual could be used to lure the pretty village girl he had his
eye on.
He has
been campaigning for a crackdown on the practice of tantrics, alarmed
at what he has seen.
“The
masses need to be educated and dissuaded from following these men,”
he said. “They play on people’s fears and superstitions - it is
crazy.” We visited the jail where those accused of murdering Akash
were being held.
The prison
warden told us of over 200 cases of child sacrifice in these parts over
the last seven years.
He admitted
many of the cases go unreported because the police are reluctant to
tarnish the image of their state. He told us incidents of child sacrifice
are often covered up.
Many of
those killers are behind bars - but, chillingly, others poisoned by
the same sinister beliefs remain at large.
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