Rani Kisku told The Wire<\/strong><\/a>, \u2018Now we are scared that they might kill us too<\/em>.\u2019 Kisku said this shortly after her mother, Lodgi, was beaten to death by neighbours in West Bengal\u2019s Harisara village after being accused of being a witch.\u00a0<\/p>\n Witch-hunting<\/a><\/strong> is a form of gender-based violence. Women, often those from marginalised communities, are falsely branded as \u2018daains<\/em>\u2019 (witches) and violently attacked following instances of misfortune in the community, such as diseases or poor crops. However, witch-hunting isn\u2019t just rooted in superstition. It is a tool used by men to deliberately strip women of their lands, their dignity, and their lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Rani\u2019s case, the family was far too afraid of retaliation and further violence to grieve. Instead of processing the loss of Lodgi, they had to contend with who the mob intends to target next. The details of the crime are well documented. Lodgi Kisku, 54, and Dolly Soren, 40, were killed on September 13, 2024, just before the Karam Puja festival. A local mob dragged them out, tied them up, and murdered them over suspicions of witchcraft before dumping their bodies into a canal.\u00a0<\/p>\n Uttering her mother\u2019s name publicly in the village square would have invited immediate and violent retaliation, making her grief a liability.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Law enforcement eventually arrested fifteen individuals. However, the legal paperwork misses one of the many devastating consequences of the crime: Rani was entirely barred from conducting a funeral. Uttering her mother\u2019s name publicly in the village square would have invited immediate and violent retaliation, making her grief a liability.<\/p>\n The pattern repeats continuously across the region. Consider the violence in Purilia\u2019s Chapuri village on the night of the Kali Puja. Padabi Tudu<\/strong><\/a>, a 37-year-old woman \u2014 and the only educated female member of her marital household \u2014 was hacked to death by her own relatives in front of her thirteen-year-old daughter. The extended family had spent five years labelling her a daain<\/em>, simply because a brother-in-law had passed away from an undiagnosed neurological condition.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, her daughter cannot speak about her trauma. Tudu\u2019s husband cannot publicly defend or acknowledge his wife\u2019s murder, knowing that doing so would be read by the village as an admission of his own complicity in the witchcraft she was accused of.<\/p>\n Official figures show a grim reality. According to the latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)<\/strong><\/a>, India recorded 85 witchcraft-motivated murders in 2022<\/strong><\/a> and 74 the following year<\/strong><\/a>. While <\/strong>states like Jharkhand and Odisha see some of the highest instances of witch-hunting, West Bengal has also witnessed numerous such cases.<\/p>\n But when the state only records the murders, the psychological aftermath is completely overlooked. Denying families the right to grieve isn\u2019t a secondary effect of the violence; it is one of the primary objectives. The first step is the murder. The second step is destroying the memory of the victim\u2019s social existence entirely by forcing their families into silence and hiding their grief.<\/p>\n The methods of enforcing this silence depend heavily on demographic lines. The tactics deployed against a Dalit victim\u2019s family contrast sharply with those used against the families of Adivasi survivors. In Dalit communities across Bengal, a quiet, implicit boycott of the victim\u2019s family takes place. A panchayat rarely issues a formal decree against mourning. Instead, neighbours simply vanish and turn their backs. Anyone bringing up the dead woman\u2019s name is met with the subject being changed instantly.\u00a0<\/p>\n Women, especially widows, are often branded as \u2018witches\u2019 by male relatives as a method of violent land-grab.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Surviving relatives quickly learn that grieving must occur indoors, behind closed doors. Further, women, especially widows, are often branded as \u2018witches\u2019 by male relatives as a method of violent land-grab<\/a><\/strong>. In such instances, the silence imposed on families ensures that the perpetrators can secure the stolen property without any further opposition from the traumatised families.<\/p>\n Adivasi women face a different reality. The largest tribal community in West Bengal are the Santals. Among them, mourning is communal and involves specific communal ritualistic practices. An accusation of witchcraft disrupts this cultural practice entirely. Once a woman who is branded a witch is murdered, the \u2018witch\u2019 label ensures she is permanently excluded from being remembered.<\/p>\n Ultimately, whether through social boycott or ritual exclusion, families of Dalit and Adivasi women murdered over accusations of witchcraft carry emotional burdens they cannot publicly express. While recent sociological literature successfully identifies the patriarchal structures and healthcare deficits surrounding these crimes, they consistently overlook the profound psychological impact of denied and silenced grief.<\/p>\n The state apparatus provides no remedy for this specific form of psychological violence. In fact, West Bengal still lacks a dedicated law against witch-hunting. Because law enforcement agencies cannot tackle forced social silence, they only address the murders and leave the families to deal with the impacts of the policing of their grief and the silence enforced on them all by themselves.<\/p>\n The quiet machinery of a witch-hunt, the rumour-mill, the absolute destruction of a woman\u2019s social standing, and forcing her family into silence, is not seen or recognised by the law.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n The quiet machinery of a witch-hunt, the rumour-mill, the absolute destruction of a woman\u2019s social standing, and forcing her family into silence, is not seen or recognised by the law. However, while Bengal has no specific laws against witch-hunting, even when there are specific laws, such as the one in Assam<\/strong><\/a>, outlawing witch-hunting and making it a non-bailable offence can only do so much.<\/p>\n This approach, which purely focuses on punishment, cannot address the psychological and emotional violence inflicted on victims and their families. A law cannot force a village to show up to a funeral. And it cannot change the fact that a daughter isn\u2019t allowed to cry about her mother\u2019s brutal murder publicly.<\/p>\n\n
When grief is silenced<\/h3>\n
Divergent erasure<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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A phenomenon overlooked by the state<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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A politics of grief<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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