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Zambia: Mob Kills, Buries Man Accused of Witchcraft

A seventy-two year old man of Kabende Village in Chief Kasoma Bangweulu in Samfya has been killed and buried by a mob that suspected him of practising witchcraft. Muchinga Kabali was killed on Sunday February 24.

Luapula Province Police chief Malcolm Mulenga said Mr Kabali was suspected of changing into a crocodile which was terrorising and killing people in the area. When police officers rushed to the village, they found the mob had dispersed and the body of Mr Kabali was already buried by the same mob.

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India: One more woman branded ‘tonhi’, killed for practicing black magic in Chhattisgarh

A family beat a middle-aged woman to death after branding her as ‘tonhi’ and alleging that she was involved in witchcraft practices at village Tripuri of Balrampur district on Sunday night. 

Balrampur police have arrested a woman, her son and two others of the same family on Monday. The accused, however, have shown no remorse in the killing after being arrested. 

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Zimbabwe: Ritual murders shock Mhondoro

Villagers and pupils in Mhondoro-Mubaira are living in fear following a spate of suspected ritual killings that have taken place over the past few months. The attacks on pupils took place in Murowa village under Chief Nyamweda in December 2013 and last week 16-year-old Moreblessing Murove was fatally axed and her body parts were mutilated in another suspected case of ritual murder.

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Romania: Witches must pay taxes

In an effort to crack down on tax evasion and pull the nation out of a recession, Romania has decided to tax its witches. Romanian witches are not pleased and said they will respond by doing what they do best: casting a spell on the president and government.

The government’s new tax law came into effect on Jan. 1 and will target witches as well as astrologers and fortune tellers. They will now be included in the labor code, treated like any self-employed person and expected to pay 16 percent income tax and contribute to state health and pension programs.

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Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia’s Islamic Religious Police Hunt Witches on Twitter

Saudi Arabia’s feared religious police authority has decided to launch a war against what it described as vice and sorcery accounts on Twitter inside the conservative Gulf kingdom, saying it aims to destroy all those accounts.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice said it had formed special teams to track those accounts and arrest those who are behind them.

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USA: Woman accused of sex abuse, told children she was witch

An Evansville woman was arrested on warrants out of Henderson for a number of crimes, including three counts of sexual abuse.

Ghana: Ignorance, witchcraft & cannibalism

This post is written as part of the columnist’s continued fight to expose and discourse relevant cultural, social, political and economic issues which affect the development of Ghana/Africa. His column discusses many issues, including ignorance, witchcraft and cannibalism in Ghana and the world.

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Philippines: Ritual killing of mother – blood drained, body parts gone – jolts village

At the weekend, officials discovered a grisly sight: the badly mutilated body of Musala Amil, who had apparently died at the hands of her three sons.

Blood appeared to have been drained from her body; several body parts were missing, according to the chair of Barangay Kamasi, Bai Suraida Mamaluba.

“One of her relatives said the victim’s eyes had been taken; her throat was slashed, and innards were missing — they said these appeared to have been eaten by the suspects,” Mamaluba said.

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India: Man gets death penalty for human sacrifice

A court has awarded the death penalty to a man who beheaded a baby and drank its blood in West Bengal’s Bankura district two years ago. 

Lakshmi Kanta Sarkar, a tantric, was caught drinking blood that was dripping from the severed head of the baby in January 2012. The villagers thrashed him before handing him over to the police. 

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India: The Prevalence of Witches

A lot more than just legislation is needed to curb the frequent incidents of witch-hunting in Odisha. 

The infamous medieval treatise on witch-hunting, the Malleus Maleficarum (1486), speaks in the authoritative voice of a book of law —  it lays down the rules with which the process of ‘justice’, involving the identification, prosecution and systematic elimination of witches (almost always women), is to be conducted.

The methodology it codified does not really sound so medieval when considered in the context of contemporary Indian reality. Here, the common people’s continuing lack of access to the formal justice system in remote and not-so-remote areas means that any powerful person can mimic the voice of law to serve his interests, as the author of Malleus Maleficarum did. 

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