November 10, 2013 (Jharkhand, India)

I did see the killing of the witches in the forest. You see our village is very small; it is known who the witches are. Ashrita and Prutha Basak, they have cursed the village. It was for this that they were punished.

It started when Saeed was killed five years ago. He was a good man, and his daughter was healthy. They lived on the edge of town. His wife Ashrita was not kind, she always making fights with Saeed. We could hear her screaming and crying in the village.

One day, Saeed fell ill and died of the fever. That is when Ashrita stopped the screaming and crying. She was pleased that Saeed had died. She began to fall away from the village. It is no way to live, a woman alone with a child. It is against the Gods.

So the people of the village would not take up with Ashrita, and the children would no longer play with Prutha. It was making Ashrita angrier. Soon the children of the village began to fall sick with the fever.

Ashrita was casting evil upon the village. Out of her anger and hatred for her husband and our village she acted out against our children. We could see that Ashrita was a Dayan, and she had cursed the village, starting with her husband.

There is only one way to remove the curse of a Dayan, and that is to kill her. The men of our village knew the dayan must be stopped.

In the evening, just before the sun was setting, Shiv, Haani, and Dharun went to the house of Ashrita and Prutha. The village women and children followed. People were yelling in anger to kill the dayan.

Shiv pushed in the door to the house, and Haani and Dharun went inside. There was much noise, the breaking of wood. Soon women were crying, and we knew they had found the Dayan and her daughter.

Haani was first to come out of the house; he had Prutha by the hair. She was kicking and crying for her mother. The children of the village were shouting at her, and throwing stones as Haani drug the girl towards the forest.

Soon after Dharun came out with Ashrita, she was bloody in the face. He shoved her to the ground, and people began to kick her and shout at her. Dharun also had blood on his face. That is why Shiv then grabbed Ashrita.

He drug her to the forest also. In the forest, we threw stones at the women. We beat them for their crimes against our children. That is the way of the Sarna. The village would be cursed if we did not punish the women for their dayan evil.

In the forest, both women were put to death for their crimes.  Dharun cut both their throats, and that is when we went back to our village to set fire to the witches house.  I watched it burn. This dayan will no longer make our children ill.

A woman must not be a Dayan in Jharkhand. A woman will be killed for dayan crimes.

Sincerely,

Dimbeswari Bhattarai