A memorial for witch-hunt victims may sound odd, but the Odisha police have chosen this innovative way to sensitise people to shun the heinous practice.
The witch-hunt victims’ memorial, said to be the first of its kind in the country, was opened to the public in the district headquarter town of Keonjhar on Wednesday.
While it has a symbolic statue in memory of all the innocents who were killed after being branded as witch, the names of the victims have been etched on a granite stone.
State Director General of Police R.P. Sharma inaugurated the statue in the presence of 300 witch-hunt victims and members of self-help groups.
In order to sensitise the public, Mr. Sharma and top officials of Keonjhar sat with women who had been branded as witches over dinner and discussed measures to rid society of the menace.
“The inhuman practice of witch-hunting prevails in several States, including Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Assam, mainly in the tribal areas. The social evil has long vanished from most parts of the world, barring India and some African countries,” said Keonjhar Superintendent of Police Jai Narayan Pankaj.
“In India, 134 people, majority of them being women, were killed after being branded as witch. In Odisha last year, 18 people were killed. In Keonjhar, more than 50 people have been killed in the last 10 years,” said Mr. Pankaj.
According to the Odisha Rationalist Society, an independent body of rationalists, the problem is much bigger.
“According to newspaper reports and our own field verifications, Odisha loses an average of 70 lives on account of witch-hunting every year. In the last two months, 10 murders have been committed. While five members of a family were wiped out in Sundargarh district in January, three were killed in Rayagada a couple of days ago,” said ORS secretary Debendra Sutar.
A decorated van with awareness messages, publicity material and copies of the Odisha Prevention of Witch-hunting Act, 2013, was also flagged off. It will move in the interior pockets of Keonjhar to raise awareness about the social evil.
