The girl was abducted in her sleep on the night of August 11.
The next night, police in Charaideo District, Assam, India found the girl’s body by the local Singlu River. Also found were the items used in the sacrifice of Indian Tantric Buddhism, including some red cloth and ashes. This shows that the 5-year-old girl is most likely to be used as a living sacrifice.
And this kind of inhuman and ignorant behavior is not an extreme case in India. In more cases, these sacrificed children were cut off from certain parts of their bodies. After they bleed and died, their internal organs were cut out and placed in front of the statue.
Many Indians, especially those in eastern and southern India, under the bewilderment of claiming to be tantric “saints” or “practitioners”, still firmly believe that if they sacrifice a child to the gods, they can get wealth, health, and happiness. And children.
Children disappear frequently in India
In fact, there have been incidents of sacrificing children in the area before. In 2016, a 4-year-old girl disappeared in another tea plantation in the area, and her mutilated body was found a few days later.
Sanal Edamaruku, chairman of the “Indian Rationalist Association”, once told the media that no state in India has not had similar incidents, but in the eastern regions of West Bengal, Jharkhand, Eastern Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh. And the southern regions are the most popular.
The National Criminal Records Bureau (NCRB) under the Ministry of the Interior of India has included living sacrifices in its statistics since 2014. Statistics show that from 2014 to 2016, a total of 51 such murders occurred in 14 of India’s 29 states. From 2017 to 2019, the number of such crimes declined, with a total of 33 incidents occurring in 12 states.
However, professionals who are concerned about such cases pointed out that this number is clearly underestimated, and there are still many cases that have not been recorded due to lax law enforcement and insufficient evidence. In addition, the chairman of the “Indian Rationalist Association” mentioned above has pointed out that the number of sacrifices made by living people in India should be measured by the number of missing children in the country each year.
An illustration depicting a living sacrifice ceremony held by the Khonte tribe in India
Close (to) relatives or acquaintances commit crimes, so some cases will not enter the police’s field of vision.
If this statement holds up, then this number will be “horribly large.” According to the latest “Report of the Missing of Indian Women and Children” (hereinafter referred to as “the Missing Report”) of the National Criminal Records Bureau of India, between 2016 and 2018, the total number of missing children in India was 193,890 (63,407 children were missing in 2016. In 2017, 63,349 children were missing, and in 2018, a total of 67,134 children were missing).
Moreover, in order to sort out cases of child sacrifice in India, one feature is easy to find-close (closest) relatives or acquaintances commit crimes, so some cases will not enter the police’s field of vision, and thus cannot be effectively counted.
In the case of a 5-year-old girl in Assam, her father was one of the suspects. And on February 8 this year, a woman in the Parakad district of Kerala, India, hacked her 6-year-old son to death and sacrificed to the gods. After the incident, she called the police to tell the story, and was subsequently arrested by the police. At that time, she was pregnant with her fourth child. The father and the other two children only learned about it after the police arrived.
In January 2017, the body of a 6-year-old boy in Maharashtra was found hiding a few meters away from his home after being missing for 18 hours. The perpetrator was the boy’s aunt. In order to prevent her husband from fighting with herself, she obeyed the so-called Tantric “practitioner” and sacrificed a boy to the gods.
A week before the boy’s disappearance, the perpetrator had already started digging the hole where the body was hidden. She also asked the boy’s mother to help herself dig the hole on the grounds of building a temple.
Why is human flesh a tribute?
Living sacrifices are a vice that has existed since ancient times. Human lives are often offered as expensive sacrifices to so-called gods in order to gain strength, wealth, and power. The Shang Dynasty, Indians, Mayan culture and Aztec culture in our country all once popularized living sacrifices, but after entering the modern society, most areas have already abolished such inhuman vices. But there are still some places, such as India and some countries in Africa, where there are still living sacrifices.
The living sacrificial offerings in India mostly appear among the people of Tantric worship, and this kind of belief has millions of followers throughout India. Tantric worship is a spiritual movement that originated in medieval India. Indian historian Abraham Elalli called it a cult in his book “The First Spring: India’s Golden Age” and pointed out that it was in 8 It was most popular in India in the century, and many rituals involved blood sacrifices, sacrifices to living people, and cannibalism rituals.
Hindu Goddess Kali
Believers are keen to let those victims die slowly under the long torture, because they believe that in this way, the blood, flesh and bones of the sacrifice have been modulated. In the above-mentioned 2017 case of living sacrifices in Maharashtra, a 6-year-old boy was bleed and collected in a container for the goddess Kali to “enjoy”. Moreover, there are several tantras that drink blood in rituals.
In most cases of living sacrifices, there is a “practitioner” or “saint” who instigates and presides over the ceremony. These people set up shops in towns and villages, claiming to have “superior power”, but in fact they use magic performances to deceive people’s trust, thereby making money and killing, which is no different from what we often call “sacred sticks”.
However, in the context of widespread blind belief in religion and low education level, many Indians firmly believe in such swindlers. Therefore, when encountering any problems, these believers in India want to solve them by offering sacrifices to the gods.
For example, according to the British “Guardian”, a woman in Kurja, India, in order to prevent herself from having nightmares, listened to the words of the tantric sacred stick and sacrificed a 6-year-old child in the same village. The Washington Post reported that on October 24, 2016, a 4-year-old girl in the Charaideo district of Assam was sacrificed by a couple in the same village; the reason was that their daughter lost a mobile phone and they hoped to sacrifice it through a living person. Sacrifice, pray for the gods to help find the phone.
Anti-Living Man Sacrifice Act
Tantra was involved in the crime of living sacrifices and was purged in some areas. But Prashant, a esoteric religious believer, said in an interview with the British “Guardian” that their reputation was ruined by a group of crazy few people. He admitted that people do come to him with various questions, but he only recommends pujas, and rarely recommends animal sacrifices, let alone sacrifices to living people.
As such incidents continue to be exposed, the Indian government is also trying to reduce and eliminate the occurrence of such crimes. The common practice is to treat living sacrifices as murder cases, and to impose criminal penalties on those who perform and participate in the sacrifices.
It is worth mentioning that the state of Maharashtra in central India formulated the “Maharashtra State Preventing and Eradication of Living Sacrifices and Other Inhumane, Evil, and Ugly Practices” in 2013 to deal with such cases. And Black Magic Act, also known as Act No. 30 of Maharashtra State in 2013 (hereinafter referred to as “Act 30”).
Children in West Bengal, India
When encountering any problems, these believers in India want to solve them by offering sacrifices to the gods.
The actions that “Act 30” cracked down not only include extreme living sacrifices, but also include the use of so-called supernatural powers, dark magic powers, or evil spirits by crooks with evil motives to exploit ordinary people in society, destroy social structures, and destroy social structures. Matters related to it.
The attached table of the bill specifically lists 12 types of behaviors that are prohibited and subject to criminal penalties: causing physical harm to others in the name of expelling ghosts or putting urine or excrement into the population; by showing “miracle” “Profit and intimidate others; in order to obtain the blessing of divine power, follow inhumane and evil practices, causing life danger or serious harm, instigate, encourage or force others to follow this practice; in order to achieve various purposes, take living sacrifices; Claiming to perform operations with fingers, claiming to change the sex of a fetus in a woman’s womb; maintaining sexual relations with a woman who cannot become pregnant, claiming to make her a mother through supernatural powers, etc.
”Act 30” shows to a certain extent the local government’s crackdown on living sacrifices. The bill stipulates that whether it is to implement, abet or spread the sacrifice of a living person, it will be punished equally-not less than 6 months imprisonment, extended to a maximum of 7 years, and a fine of not less than 5,000 rupees, with a maximum increase To 50,000 rupees.
The introduction of the bill reduced the occurrence of such cases to a certain extent, but the effect was not ideal. Instead, some tantric admirers counterattacked. As a rationalist, Narendra Dabhorka has always been committed to eliminating the blind and superstition of tantric worship in the local area. At the same time, he is also a key figure in the introduction of “Act 30.” But shortly after the bill was introduced, he was assassinated by fanatics.
The resistance doesn’t stop there. A person in the state of Maharashtra who popularized “Bill 30” once said that although the bill has been introduced, many people are not aware of such a bill. Moreover, law enforcement agencies have a poor sense of law enforcement. Many such cases have been investigated by “crude” investigations. Some cases of living sacrifices were treated as organ thefts, and some were found not guilty at the stage of court hearings.
Activists opposed to living sacrifices suggested raising people’s awareness of the illegality of living sacrifices, but the chief of the local police station said: “Indian law clearly shows that murder is a crime. Why do you have to tell people specifically to offer sacrifices? Murder for the purpose is also illegal?”
