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Witch hunting | Victims of superstition
New Delhi: The whitewashed brick house, with a “You Are Welcome” sign and floral patterns painted at the entrance, looks bright enough from the outside. At least it stands out among the four mud houses in the vicinity in Baralagra, a village in West Singhbhum district of Jharkhand. Peer inside and you find two bare rooms, the floors covered thick with dust, and dead insects and cobwebs hanging from the ceilings.
The house has been empty since September 2009, when an unmarried 37-year-old woman and her 60-year-old mother were killed by a mob of villagers on suspicion that they were daayans, or witches. The mother’s body was discovered with ligature marks on her neck, indicating she had been hanged. The daughter’s body hasn’t been found.