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ramonmercado Offline

Psycho Punk

Joined: 19 Aug 2003

Total posts: 17931

Location: Dublin

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Posted: 12-04-2006 17:16 Post subject: Horror of India's child sacrifice

Quote:

Horror of India's child sacrifice
By Navdip Dhariwal
BBC News, Uttar Pradesh, India

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.

Lured with sweets

I was led by locals to a house that is kept under lock and key. They refuse to enter it.

"They [the tantrics] play on people's fears and superstitions - it is crazy"
S Raju
Campaigning journalist

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.

"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."

'Profiting from fear'

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.

Crackdown campaign

S Raju is a journalist for the Hindustan Times and 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."

Unreported

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.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/south_asia/4903390.stm

Published: 2006/04/12 14:48:25 GMT

© BBC MMVI

Mighty_Emperor Offline

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Joined: 18 Aug 2002

Total posts: 19943

Location: Mongo

Age: 42

Gender: Male

Posted: 14-04-2006 16:59 Post subject:

Quote:

Source says dad charged in girl's death cited devil

By Angela Rozas
Tribune staff reporter
Published March 31, 2006

A Clarendon Hills man charged with killing his 8-year-old daughter told authorities she was the devil and he had to kill her to save the world, a law enforcement source said Thursday.

Neil J. Lofquist, 40, talked to authorities for 14 hours, including breaks, after the killing of Lauren Lofquist on Sunday, and gave a detailed statement that was videotaped, the source said.

The family on Thursday announced funeral arrangements for Lauren, who they said was a goalkeeper for the AYSO soccer club and a member of Brownie Troop 1489, the Community Presbyterian Church LOGOS Program and the Clarendon Hills Little League.

In the statement, Lofquist, speaking clearly and calmly, said he saw signs of the devil in his daughter and saw the number "666" in a card game they were playing, the source said. Lofquist told authorities he would not hurt his 6-year-old son because he was "the chosen one," the source said.

In charging Lofquist on Monday, police said he choked and stabbed Lauren in the family's home and submerged her head in a toilet in an upstairs bathroom. His wife and son were downstairs, police said, and left the home after Lofquist said he needed to go to the hospital. The family asked a neighbor to watch Lauren, and the sitter discovered her in an upstairs bathroom.

Lofquist's wife told investigators he had been acting strangely for three to four weeks, the source said.

Investigators are awaiting DNA tests of evidence collected from the girl's autopsy to determine whether to bring more charges against Lofquist, law enforcement sources said.

Prosecutors have said they will request a psychiatric evaluation, and attorney Terry Ekl, who will represent Lofquist, said he, too, would ask for an evaluation.

"We will be making decisions very soon as to whether we'll assert an insanity defense," Ekl said.

Lofquist, who is being held without bail in DuPage County Jail, is expected in court Monday.

Lauren's visitation is scheduled from 2 to 8 p.m. Saturday in Gibbons Elliston, 60 S. Grant St. Hinsdale. The funeral service will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday in Notre Dame Church, Clarendon Hills.

----------

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Source

Mighty_Emperor Offline

Divine Wind

Joined: 18 Aug 2002

Total posts: 19943

Location: Mongo

Age: 42

Gender: Male

Posted: 19-05-2006 04:45 Post subject:

PTSD? There have been other killings by soldiers returning from Iraq.

Quote:

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Investigators testify of mutilation of woman's body at soldier's trial

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

FORT LEWIS, Wash.

Investigators who arrived at the home of a decorated Army soldier found the body of the man's wife mutilated with a pentagram carved into her flesh and blood-smeared messages in the kitchen.

Spc. Brandon Bare, 20, of Wilkesboro, N.C., has since been charged with premeditated murder in the death of his wife Nabila, 18. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Bare's court-martial continued yesterday, a day after a military jury heard opening statements from Army prosecutors.

Bare's wife was found in the couple's kitchen on July 12, 2005, stabbed at least 71 times.

Randy Mullins, a civilian evidence specialist, testified that there were seven knives arranged on the floor around the dead woman's head, "in kind of a halo format." A meat cleaver was in her throat.

Lead prosecutor Capt. Scott DiRocco said that the woman was naked and had a pentagram carved into her stomach, on which rested a note that read, "'Til death do us part." On the refrigerator, there was a bloody message: "Satan said she deserved it."

DiRocco said that the couple met when Bare arrived at Fort Lewis in November 2003. The two married before Bare, a machine-gunner with the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, was sent to Iraq in October 2004.

Bare had been in Iraq less than a year when he was sent home to recuperate from injuries suffered in a grenade attack March 24, 2005, on his Stryker brigade unit in Mosul.

The killing occurred about three months after Bare returned to Fort Lewis and was awarded a Purple Heart for his injuries.

The couple's relationship began to sour that March, DiRocco said.

In his confession, given a day after the killing, Bare said he thought about strangling his wife and had considered a meat cleaver as a possible weapon.

Bare's wife was using the couple's computer when Bare grabbed a meat cleaver and attacked her. Bare went upstairs to clean himself off and returned to snap 25 pictures of her body.

In his opening statement, defense attorney Capt. Patrick O'Brien said that Bare's wife had been having an affair with another soldier. On the night of the killing, O'Brien said, she had been e-mailing the other man as Bare pleaded with her to stay in the marriage.

"This was not a cold-blooded killing. It was not a premeditated murder," O'Brien said. "This was a killing done in the heat of intense passion."

Michael Collins, a nurse and case manager at Madigan Army Medical Center, testified that Bare came to him the morning of the killing and said he had killed his wife.

Collins said that Bare told him that he remembered kissing his wife good night, but when he woke the next morning, she was dead.

Source

Last edited by Mighty_Emperor on 05-05-2007 01:34; edited 1 time in total

rynner

Location: Still above sea level

Gender: Male

Posted: 04-05-2007 20:24 Post subject: Re: Charles Walton - An Unsolved Occult Murder

Carnacki~ wrote:

An unsolved mystery from February 14th 1945 when Charles Walton, a 74 year old farm labourer from Lower Quinton in Warwickshire, well-liked if eccentric but certainly no known enemies was murdered in an occult fashion. With no known motive, or witnesses in an otherwise sleepy rural village, Robert Fabian, a famous Detective Superintendent from London attempted to solve the case but came up against a wall of silence and constant hints of witchcraft.

I'm just reading a mystery story, set in the 21st century, which has the Meon Hill 'sacrifice' as its background:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/c/judith-cook/worm-in-bud.htm

The original post
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=109527#109527
quotes a website saying:
"He had been brutally murdered with his own trouncing hook, which still lay embedded in his throat, and then pinned to the ground with his hayfork."

But in Cook's book (she claims the facts of the murder are accurate) an author's note states:
"A billhook had been driven through his chest and a hayfork through his throat."

Someone has their facts wrong!

(The modern story is about anti-GM crop protestors - no doubt someone is going to come to a grisly end!)

ramonmercado Offline

Psycho Punk

Joined: 19 Aug 2003

Total posts: 17931

Location: Dublin

Gender: Male

Posted: 13-01-2010 20:08 Post subject:

Quote:

Pakistani couple charged with 'occult killing' of baby
map

A couple in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi have been charged with murdering their baby daughter as part of an alleged "black magic" ritual.

Officers found the body of the four-month-old girl buried in the couple's house, a court heard. Doctors say it had been there for about four days.

They believe the couple were planning to murder their second daughter, a girl of three, who police found tied up.

Superstitious rituals are not uncommon in Pakistan, but rarely lead to murder.

'Semi-conscious'

Police raided the house in the poor Karachi neighbourhood of Korangi after a tip-off that it was being used by suspected militants as a safe house.

"When nobody answered the door, we broke into the house in the presence of some elders," local police chief Rana Mehmood Pervez told the BBC Urdu service.

A 40-year-old cobbler named as Nadim who rented the house was overpowered after resisting arrest, Mr Mehmood said.

Inside the only room of the house, a three-year-old girl, identified as Maryam, was lying on the floor with her hands and feet tied, he said.

"She was in a semi-conscious state, and her mother, Sana, was sitting beside her."

The BBC's Riaz Sohail in Karachi says the couple had lit a number of candles around the child, which police believe was part of some magic ritual. Police also found printed material containing black magic chants and other information.

The room was filled with the smell of rotting flesh, Mr Mehmood said.

"There was some loose ground where the child was lying, so we dug it up and found the body of four-month-old Fazeelat," he said.

'Evil forces'

Nadim and his wife said "ill-wishers" had put them under a "black magic" spell, police told the BBC.

To ward off the spell, they had contacted a "pir" - or faith healer - in the north-western city of Dera Ismail Khan, and were following his instructions, Mr Mehmood said. He said Nadim had told police that "evil forces" wanted to take Fazeelat away.

A doctor who carried out a post mortem at Karachi's Jinnah hospital said she had been dead for about four days.

Mr Mehmood said he believed the couple would have killed their other daughter as well.

The two accused appeared in court on Tuesday and were remanded for two weeks for further questioning.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8455370.stm

ramonmercado Offline

Psycho Punk

Joined: 19 Aug 2003

Total posts: 17931

Location: Dublin

Gender: Male

Posted: 18-03-2010 15:52 Post subject:

Quote:

Indian children may have been 'sacrificed'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8573986.stm

By Prachi Pinglay
BBC News, Mumbai

Map

Five children poisoned to death in a village in India may have been "sacrificed", police say.

They say that the children were killed in Maharashtra state by a childless couple in a suspected black magic ritual to enable them to conceive.

The couple and parents of the accused husband have been arrested. Officials say post-mortem results are awaited.

Black magic is sometimes carried out in poorer parts of India by people who believe it will provide benefits.

These can include helping childless women to bear children and producing more rainfall.

'Foul play'

Police say they are looking for the tantrik, or witch doctor, who advised the couple to "sacrifice" 11 children in accordance with black magic rituals.

They say that Vitthal and Vandana Mokle were married for 12 years but were unable to conceive despite frequently visiting doctors.

Investigating Officer Sheikh Abdul Rauf told the BBC that after initial inquiries they suspected foul play in the deaths of the children.

"The first death occurred in December 2009 and the most recent one was in March," he said.

"After speaking to villagers we investigated the Mokle family's role. The parents of Vitthal have also been arrested as they seem to be part of this plan.

"The prima facie case is that they poisoned six children - only one survived but he is unable to speak."

All the children were aged between two and four and were related to each other.

Initially residents of the village of Digras - close to the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra - thought the deaths were because of snake bites as the children showed typical symptoms - such as frothing in the mouth and vomiting.

The village has a population of about 300 people living in approximately 30 to 40 houses.

Officials say that they are awaiting post-mortem reports on the deaths - and until then it is not possible to ascertain the exact circumstances of the deaths.

ramonmercado Offline

Psycho Punk

Joined: 19 Aug 2003

Total posts: 17931

Location: Dublin

Gender: Male

Posted: 16-04-2010 14:24 Post subject:

Quote:

India 'human sacrifice' suspected in West Bengal temple
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8624269.stm

By Subir Bhaumik
BBC News, Calcutta

Map

The severed head and torso of a man has been found in a temple in the Indian state of West Bengal in what the police say is a case of "human sacrifice".

The head and the body were found at the local temple to the goddess Kali near Chotomakdampur village in the western district of Birbhum.

Police say they have detained a tribal villager for questioning.

Human sacrifice is illegal in India. But a few cases do occur in remote and underdeveloped regions.

"This man has been sacrificed to propitiate the gods," said local official Kalyan Mukherjee.

"This is a shame for Bengal where the ruling Left coalition claim they have eradicated social evils and combated superstition," an opposition leader Samir Kumar Ray said.

Though human sacrifice has long been banned in India, some people, mostly the poor and illiterate, fall under the influence of "witch doctors" in the hope of reversing their fortunes.

ramonmercado Offline

Psycho Punk

Joined: 19 Aug 2003

Total posts: 17931

Location: Dublin

Gender: Male

Posted: 01-05-2010 21:55 Post subject:

Quote:

Uganda's child sacrifice scourge
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2010/0501/1224269451810.html
JODY CLARKE in Jinja, Uganda

Sat, May 01, 2010

Twenty-nine people, including 15 children, were killed as ritual sacrifices in Uganda last year, yet none the perpetrators has been brought to justice

CAROLINE LIKISO would have been nine years old this year. But on January 22nd, while she was playing with friends outside her home, a neighbour put a chloroform-soaked cloth over her mouth and disappeared with her. Four days later, her body was found dumped in the bush. Her throat had been slit and her tongue removed.

“We used to go to the same church as the neighbour,” says Caroline’s mother, Rose, a Catholic. “But a factory owner offered them 18 million shillings (€6,500) to get the tongue. He needed a sacrifice to get his new wax candle machines moving.”

Ritual murders are on the rise in Uganda and, according to a US state department report released this month, children are commonly the victims. The number of people killed in human sacrifice increased from three in 2007 to 25 in 2008 and 29 in 2009, say the Ugandan police. Of those 29, 15 were children.

They include Moses Ogen, aged one. In April last year, he was found in Paromo village in Gulu district with his face mutilated. In August, the castrated body of Solomon Otiti, aged three, was discovered in Apac, northern Uganda. Both were the apparent victims of ritual sacrifice.

They are just a few of the many cases. A study conducted by Uganda’s ministry of gender, labour and social development late last year revealed that most cases of child sacrifice do not find their way to the police. And even when they do, the perpetrators are rarely punished. Caroline’s alleged killers were released on a police bond of four million shillings (€1,400). And the factory owner, although he went into hiding, is back in Jinja, untouched by the authorities.

By the end of January this year, 125 suspected perpetrators of human sacrifice had been arrested and 54 taken to court, charged with criminal offences such as murder and kidnap. However, there have yet to be any convictions, despite the fact that Uganda’s 1957 Witchcraft Act prohibits acts of witchcraft which involve threatening others with death.

“I thought the police would put them in a national prison for a long time” says Rose, sitting by a sewing machine in the front room of her red-brick bungalow. “Now I feel I can do nothing. I have lost hope.”

On the walls, there are four Catholic calendars, three of them showing images of the Ugandan Martyrs, a group of Christians burned to death by King Mwanga II between 1885 and 1887 for refusing to renounce their religion. One of them, St Kizito, was just 14 years old.

Poverty, weak legislation and an influx of violent Nigerian films showcasing the rich rewards on offer to anyone sacrificing a human being have all been cited as reasons behind the rise in cases of human sacrifice. But the problem can also be linked to traditional healers or witch doctors, whose numbers have sprouted in recent years and who are keen to offer brutally simple solutions to people’s problems. “Every two kilometres you see a sign for a traditional healer,” says Haruna Mawa, a spokesman for the child protection agency, ANPPCAN. “There are no rules governing them, so you even see Nigerians and Congolese coming into the country claiming they are healers.”

IN A MUD HUT, decorated with crude clay paintings of hyenas, camels and other animals, Matia Sabath, 27, is summoning the spirits with a blackened elephant tusk. The ceiling is made out of cardboard boxes, and in the middle of the room is a variety of shillelagh-like sticks. On top of one is a voodoo doll, which looks not all that dissimilar to a Barbie figurine.

“This is a clinic,” he says, shuffling seeds in a woven basket through the palm of his right hand. “People come here for healing when they are sick.” Sabath, a Christian, says that: “God will not take me as a devil worshipper as the spirits I use are accredited by God.” However, he admits that “competition is high”. And with competition come unscrupulous traders.

“Uganda is a very poor country,” explains Trevor Solomon, a local journalist. “People look for easy ways out of their situation, and there is no shortage of traditional healers willing to help them. And that means that there is a lot of competition for customers.”

Once consulted only at night and in secrecy, witch doctors are now an open part of Ugandan society, advertising in newspapers and on radio, and becoming increasingly media-savvy.

It’s 8.30pm on Sunday, and Dr Ssdiamo Nukassa is the main guest on African Culture, a phone-in radio show broadcast by Bugos 96FM in Jinja, a town more often associated with adventure sports. Dressed in a grey Umbro shirt, white runners and a baseball cap, the 28-year-old belies the conventional image you might have of a witch doctor. But as a succession of calls comes in, it is clear that Nukassa, despite his youth, is not lacking in fans, or confidence in his own abilities. To all questions – “Can you heal my wife, she bleeds?”, “Can you heal madness?”, “Can you protect my livestock from being stolen?”, “Can you cure HIV?” – he responds yes.

“The powers from the spirits help me heal people,” says Nukassa, sitting down to talk after his radio appearance. “To make the right selection of herbs, the spirits torment me and tell me the right ingredients to cure disease.”

With no legislation governing people such as Nukassa, it’s impossible to say whether his work is genuine or not. He says he is appalled by child sacrifice, and that the people who perform it are out to discredit the work he and others do. “Those people, when they fail to cure someone, they say kill a person, thinking they won’t do it,” he says. “It is a gamble.”

But given the number of calls Nukassa has received, it is clear that Ugandans hold traditional doctors in high regard. One reason for this is poverty.

Although the number of people living below the poverty line has decreased in Uganda, the majority of people still work as subsistence farmers. Around Jinja, that means using their six acres or so to grow sugar cane for local plantation owners, at 40,000 shillings (€14) a tonne. It’s not an easy life, and people are open to manipulation.

Moses Waligo grows sugar cane and potatoes on a small patch of land about 10km from Jinja, and would grow more but for the amount of money he has spent on witch doctors. In 1997, his father, Kabelega Lawrance, 40, went missing following a bust-up with his daughter. Since then, his son has been paying traditional healers to try to bring him back.

“People said, if you pay money he will come back,” he says. “We tried four times, but nothing. I spent 100,000 shillings (€35) the first time. The last time we had to sell our land and pay 200,000.”

Waligo is now looking for another 200,000 shillings, after he saw a friend become possessed with a spirit around a camp fire last year. “They said it is the spirit of your father. The spirit is talking. One person used sign language and another person interpreted. They said he was killed and his tongue cut out so he couldn’t talk. That’s why he was using sign language.”

Waligo believes that unless he goes to the witch doctor, who will tell him here to find his father’s body, neither he nor his children or grandchildren will ever settle. “We failed because we have no money,” he says.

Last year, the US spent $500,000 (€375,000) training 2,000 Ugandan police to investigate offences related to human trafficking, including human sacrifice. But as long as there are no convictions, unscrupulous witch doctors will think that they can act with impunity, according to Haruna Mawa. “What kind of message does that send out?” he asks.

With a lack of political will to tackle the problem, many parents have taken the protection of their children into their own hands. Witch doctors don’t kill children who have had circumcisions or their ears pierced, says Mawa, so many parents have taken it upon themselves to make sure their children have both.

For Rose, protecting her three remaining children is now her top priority. She keeps them mostly in the house, even though the family who allegedly killed Caroline have fled the area, chased away by an angry mob. Denied justice, she says she has forgiven them in her heart. “Now I have to leave things in the hands of God.”

ramonmercado Offline

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Joined: 19 Aug 2003

Total posts: 17931

Location: Dublin

Gender: Male

Posted: 21-08-2013 13:47 Post subject:

Quote:

Black magic murder: Fury in India over killing of anti-superstition activist
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/black-magic-murder-fury-in-india-over-killing-of-antisuperstition-activist-8777611.html
Narendra Dabholkar received threats for his work against mysticism and spirituality
MAJID MOHAMED Author Biography WEDNESDAY 21 AUGUST 2013

Students are marching through the streets in the Indian city of Pune to protest against the killing of an outspoken campaigner against religious superstition and black magic.

Narendra Dabholkar, 67, was gunned down in daylight while taking a morning walk on the Omkareshwar Temple bridge on Tuesday. Two attackers on a motorcycle fired four shots from close range, according to reports.

Hundreds of chanting students and activists are marching through the streets of Pune to protest the murder in Pune. Mr Dabholkar battled for decades against superstition and black magic.

Police have released a sketch of one suspect and are searching for two men on a motorcycle who are believed to have carried out the killing.

"We do not know who is involved in this and we are probing the case from all angles without ruling out any possibility," a police official told reporters.

Mr Dabholkar founded the Maharashtra Blind Faith Eradication Committee and had been been receiving death threats for his decades of work against mysticism and practices involving animal or, more rarely, human sacrifice.

His friend and fellow activist, Deepak Girme, said Mr Dabholkar had been receiving the threats since he began travelling by public buses to hundreds of villages around Maharashtra state to lecture against superstitions, religious extremism.

"He would say he was a medical doctor but that superstition was a bigger disease causing a lot of harm, especially to the poor and the gullible," Mr Girme said. "He wanted to expose the people who cheat the poor in the name of gods, who promise false cures for cancer or do black magic to perform so-called miracles."

"Half of India is hungry, half is uneducated. These babas and gurus who preach all this humbug, it doesn't translate into betterment of society. It's like the Dark Ages in Europe."

The organisation urged the Maharashtra state government to pass long-stalled legislation to ban such practices.

On Tuesday the chief minister of the state expressed his grief at the murder and announced a reward for any information. The killing comes days after the state government said it would introduce a controversial anti-superstition bill, according to media reports.

kamalktk

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Posted: 21-08-2013 15:01 Post subject:

ramonmercado wrote:

Quote:

Black magic murder: Fury in India over killing of anti-superstition activist

Narendra Dabholkar, 67, was gunned down in daylight while taking a morning walk on the Omkareshwar Temple bridge on Tuesday. Two attackers on a motorcycle fired four shots from close range, according to reports.

Shouldn't they have been able to black magic him dead?

Pietro_Mercurios

Heuristically Challenged

Gender: Unknown

Posted: 18-09-2013 22:51 Post subject:

Not so much a 'black magic murder', more an assassination.

Quote:

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/18/the_assassination_of_an_atheist_partner/

The assassination of an atheist

For over two decades, Dr. Narendra Dabholkar worked to overcome superstition in India. And it cost him his life

Salon (originally published on Alternet). By Greta Christina. Sep 18, 2013

A great skeptical leader has been assassinated.

This didn’t happen in a tyrannical theocracy. This happened in a modern, supposedly secular nation, with no state religion, and with first-class programs of science and medicine. And still, for the crime of criticizing religious beliefs, questioning them, and subjecting them to scientific scrutiny, a great skeptical leader was gunned down on the street in broad daylight.

For over two decades, Dr. Narendra Dabholkardedicated his life to overcoming superstition in India. Originally a medical doctor, Dabholkar spent years exposing religious charlatans, quacks, frauds, purveyors of “miracle cures,” and other con artists preying on gullibility, desperation, and trust. An activist against caste discrimination in India, and an advocate for women’s rights and environmentalism, Dabholkar’s commitment to social justice was expansive and enduring. But it was his work against superstition that earned him his fame.

India is a huge, hugely diverse country, and much of it — particularly the south — is thoroughly modern, urban, and largely secular. But much of the country — particularly the north — is saturated with self-proclaimed sorcerers, faith healers, fortune tellers, psychics, gurus, godmen, and other spiritual profiteers. In parts of the country, people are beaten, mutilated or murdered for being suspected of witchcraft, and there are even rare cases of human sacrifice – including thesacrifice of children – in rituals meant to appease the gods.

Throughout this country, Dabholkar traveled to towns and villages, investigating claims of miracles and magic, revealing the physical reality behind the tricks — and organizing travelling troops of activists to do the same. He didn’t try to persuade people out of the very idea of religious belief, but he was an open atheist, proud and unapologetic. He was the founder of the Committee for Eradication of Superstition in Maharashtra (Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti). He fought for years for the passage of a controversial anti-black-magic bill in India.

And it was his work against superstition that almost certainly cost him his life. On August 20, at seven in the morning during his morning walk, two men ran up to him on the street, shot him four times, and drove off on motorbikes that had been parked nearby. He was 67. As of this writing, there has been one arrest made in the case — Sandeep Shinde, a member of the hard-line right-wing Hindu organization Sanatan Sanstha.

...