Three women branded witches, lynched in Bengal

Three women were branded as witches and lynched by villagers in West Bengal’s West Midnapore district, police said Wednesday.

“The bodies of three women – one aged 42 and the other two in their sixties – were discovered today (Wednesday). They were allegedly lynched by the villagers for practising witchcraft. Seven persons have been arrested,” Superintendent of Police (West Midnapore) Sunil Chowdhury told IANS.

The incident happened in Daspur in the district, some 100 km from Kolkata. Though the lynching happened late Tuesday night, it came to light only Wednesday when the mutilated bodies of the women were discovered.

“The villagers believed that the presence of the women had brought bad luck and misery to the village and attributed a recent unnatural death of a young boy to witchcraft which the women allegedly practised,” officer in charge of Daspur police station Abhijit Biswas said.

“The bodies have been recovered and sent for post-mortem. We are interrogating those arrested to find out who else were involved in the incident,” added Biswas.