Witchcraft led to three murders in K'taka in 2015: NCRB data

One may think Karnataka, which is home for top science and technology institutes, research centres and IT firms is an advanced region. But a latest government report has a shocking revelation: the state has reported murders due to witchcraft or human sacrifice.

 The ‘Crime in India 2015’ report released on Tuesday showed that witchcraft was cited as the motive for the murder of three persons in Karnataka while one lost life due to human sacrifice.

The three cases of murder due to witchcraft is among the 135 such cases reported in the country. Twenty of the 36 states and Union territories did not report any such case. One of the 24 human sacrifices was reported in Karnataka in 2015, according to the report prepared by National Crime Records Bureau.

 In murder for dowry related issues too, Karnataka was on top-five list with 54 such cases. Odisha had 375 such cases while Bihar was a distant second with 79 cases followed by Maharashtra (78) and Telangana (75).

Of the 1,557 murder cases reported from Karnataka, communalism was cited as the reason in four cases while casteism and class conflict were attributed to one each case. As many as 58 people, including 32 girls, below the age of six years were victims of murder. The highest number of 631 murder victims was in the age group of 30-45 years.
In another intriguing figure, Karnataka is third in a list of states where the most number of unidentified bodies were found. While Maharashtra had 6,185 cases, Tamil Nadu had 3,739 followed by Karnataka with 3,533.

 In rape incidents, the statistics showed that the accused in 572 out of 589 cases were known to the victims. In 13 cases, the accused were either grandfather, father, son or brother while in 24 other cases, they were close relatives. In 155 cases, neighbours were the suspects. There were also 219 cases in which the culprits raped the victim on the pretext of marrying her.