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Where women are branded witches to grab their land

Soroor Ahmed in Dhanbad

Hardly anyone knows her by name in her own village or its vicinity. Oh, you want to meet the woman who was forced to eat human excreta! (Jisko mael khilaya gaya tha, is the turn of phrase they use.) I meet this query at half a dozen points on my way to discover the obscure village of Khedabeda, 8km south of the Eastern Railway junction of Gomoh.

Khedabeda is only 4km off the Gomoh-Baghmara main road, but this 'short' drive on a hilly kutcha village road - an apology of a road, actually - to a primitive mentality is a challenging one.

Khedabeda village took a deeper plunge into barbarism on March 22 when a widow in the village, who was suspected of being a witch, was stripped and forced to eat human excreta.

Pedki Devi, mother of a 10-year-old boy and three teenaged daughters - the eldest married only last year - had to undergo this repulsive treatment at the hands of her own relatives. Her crime? She possesses and tills her own piece of land.

A dozen or so men - with the moral support of their womenfolk - and who included her dewar (husband's brother), three nephews and others pounced on Pedki Devi and forced three bottles of liquefied human excreta into her mouth. When she resisted and refused to gulp down the obnoxious liquid, she was soundly thrashed and stripped naked.

The daughters - the eldest one was also with her at the time - and the young son tried to form a human wall and protect their mother from the attackers, but they too ended up without a shred of cloth on their black and blue bodies.

This was the version given by Pedki Devi, a short and obnoxious riposte to a decade-long struggle for land.

But Block Development Officer Arun Kumar Singh gave a slightly diluted version. "It was while resisting the attackers that her sari got torn. After all she was not being administered honey," he said very perceptively. According to Singh, the media exaggerated the stripping incident.

But to the BDO's credit, he corroborated Pedki Devi's claim that hers was not a case of witchcraft and the attackers just wanted to grab her land, totalling about eight acres. It is a typical case of what is known locally as gotia (family of brothers) rivalry.

Interestingly, all the other villagers barring those involved in the incident confirmed that Pedki Devi had never had anything to do with any sorcery. "The whole story has been cooked up to terrorise her to give up her claim on the land," said Pharkeshwar Mahto (18), who is engaged in the literacy mission in the village.

According to some villagers - and the BDO too confirmed this - the credit for bringing this sordid episode to light goes to the volunteers of the literacy mission.

But nothing has been done about the case even though several journalists and officials have followed in the footsteps of Mirza, correspondent of Dhanbad's Aaina (The Mirror) and the first reporter to visit the place. On the contrary, three of the accused have been granted bail and are daily threatening Pedki Devi and the youths engaged in the literacy mission.

At present only one person is behind bars. Pedki Devi was offered Rs30,000 to withdraw her case. "But I am not going to do so even if I am paid Rs5 lakh {500,000]," the gritty woman told Rediff On The NeT.

The geography of the village played a key role in marring the destiny of the hapless woman. Khedabeda is different from the usual Bihar village, with its population scattered in 11 small tolas (hamlets), each comprising 25 to 30 houses, separated by ditches or plots of parched land. The distance between the tolas is one to two furlongs.

Pedki Devi's tola is at the fag end of the village and is dominated by her own kinsmen-turned-enemies. Thus, there was no one to help her when the need arose. Only two women - the wives of Thakur Mahto and Sakir Mahto - and a couple of men, including Punit Mahto, raised an alarm and tried to intervene, but were outnumbered.

Pedki Devi harvests about 200 maund of dhaan (about five tonnes of rice) from her plot of land which was a bone of contention even when her husband was alive. He too was beaten up on three different occasions by the same relatives.

"They charged me with being a witch even during his lifetime. I went to an ojha [sorcerer] in [neighbouring] Giridih district to verify the matter, but he cleared me. Still they did not trust me. A panchayat [council] was held in the tola which declared me witch. The outgoing village mukhiya [headman] Narayan Mahto presided over it," she said.

Killing a woman after branding her a witch is common among the tribals - especially the Santhals and Hos - of south Bihar. The usual reason, according to Jnanpith Award-winning writer Mahasveta Devi, is because the women of these tribes inherit an equal share of the property and even command a heavy bride price.

But Pedki Devi and most of the villagers in Khedabeda are Kurmis, a land-owning backward community. Apart from the Kurmis, the village has a sprinkling of Nhai (barber) population.

Several studies in the region have confirmed that there is nothing like witchcraft, and that it is simply an excuse to get rid of the woman who owns land and property. Scores of women are being killed in this fashion in several parts of the country every year, but seldom do activists take up this issue strongly. Fighting such blind faith is a real tough job for which few seem to have the stomach.

Pedki Devi and the literacy mission volunteers, meanwhile, accuse the police, politicians and the judiciary of doing nothing. Villagers complain that even the area's member of Parliament, Bharatiya Janata Party politician Ravindra Pandey, did not show up.

But why was Pedki Devi forced to undergo such degrading treatment rather than being killed if she were a witch? According to the villagers, there is a belief that once a 'witch' is made to eat human excreta, she gets 'treated' and loses her evil powers.

Of course, others say this is nonsense. If a woman is suspected of being a witch, the only remedy is to lynch that person, they claim. Worse, those who refuse to witness or participate in the lynching also meet with the same fate. In a village in Malda district of neighbouring West Bengal a few years ago, two villagers who refused to take part in the killing suffered the same fate as the alleged witch.

Gunin or jaan is the person who identifies a 'witch' after a complaint is lodged. But in the words of the late Reverend O P Bodding, who worked among the Santhals for many years, jaans "are unmitigated scoundrels who maintain an elaborate network of spies to collect information about the sick and suspects so as to be able to denounce anyone they like". Naturally, money changes hands in these deals.

It took the lives of thousands of women for the Bihar government to recently pass the Witchcraft Prevention Bill 1999. According to the police, in the last seven years alone 500 women have been killed in this fashion.

Yet, the bill was opposed by Janata Dal politician Inder Singh Namdhari, who feared it would become another convenient instrument in the hands of the police to extort money from "innocent" tribals.

Meanwhile, Pedki Devi lives in fear. It was only after much persuasion that she made bold to return to her village. While the local co-ordinator of the literacy mission proudly claims that they have made 299 men and women literate, Pedki Devi's son has stopped going to school.

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