The Tamil Nadu Police on Thursday assured the Madras High Court that it shall provide necessary protection to a 23-year-old woman from Madhya Pradesh who had fled her home to escape from being killed by her stepmother, a proponent of black magic, as part of a human sacrifice ritual.
Appearing before Justice G. Chandrasekharan, who was seized of her plea seeking protection, State Public Prosecutor (SPP) Hasan Mohamed Jinnah said the police would certainly ensure the safety of the woman now residing in the house of a Thanthai Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam office-bearer in Chennai.
The petitioner appeared before the judge, along with her advocates S. Doraisamy and V. Elangovan, and said that her parents were politically well-connected in Madhya Pradesh and therefore she escaped to Tamil Nadu, with the assistance of her friends, in order to seek refuge.
She claimed to have come to know only recently that her stepmother had sacrificed her younger brother when he was 10 and was now planning to kill her too in a similar ritual. After hearing her, the judge said that it was disheartening to note that practices such as human sacrifice were prevalent even in the 21st century.
He ordered notices, returnable by three weeks, to the petitioner’s parents as well as to the Commissioner of Police, Bhopal. The judge also asked Mr. Jinnah to file a status report after three weeks.
In her affidavit, the petitioner had said that she was born in Uttar Pradesh and later migrated to Madhya Pradesh along with her family. Her father served in the Agriculture Department and retired in 2017. She studied at the Government Maharani Laskshmibai Girls’ College in Bhopal.
She was a Master’s degree holder in nutrition and dietetics and was now pursuing a diploma in Yoga. On the compulsion of her family members, she had joined the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) for sometime.
Published - February 23, 2023 10:09 pm IST
