5 beaten to death over witchcraft accusation in India

Five family members beaten to death and dumped in pond over witchcraft accusation in Bihar, India.

Villagers in India’s Bihar state beat five members of a single family to death and dumped their bodies in a pond, accusing them of practising witchcraft following the death of a local boy, police reported on Tuesday.

According to police, three suspects have been arrested in the northern state and have confessed to the killings.

Among those murdered were three women, including a 75-year-old elderly woman.

The main accused believed that one of the victims was responsible for his son’s recent death and blamed "him and his family for practising witchcraft", according to the official statement.

“After killing the victims, the perpetrators loaded their bodies onto a tractor and dumped them into a pond,” police said.

Both the victims and the accused belonged to the Oraon tribal community, native to Bihar — one of India’s poorest states, home to approximately 130 million people, and predominantly Hindu.

Despite public awareness campaigns against superstition, belief in witchcraft remains widespread in India’s rural areas, particularly within isolated tribal communities.

Several Indian states, including Bihar, have introduced legislation aimed at reducing crimes related to accusations of witchcraft and superstition.

Women are often branded as witches and targeted; however, the brutal murder of an entire family of five marks a particularly horrific recent incident.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, more than 1,500 people — the vast majority of them women — were killed in India on suspicion of witchcraft between 2010 and 2021.

While some genuinely believe in the occult, in many cases, such accusations are used to settle personal disputes or seize land and property.