As Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das expressed his resolve to root out witchcraft from the state, legislators cutting across party lines have backed the idea and suggested ways to uproot the medieval belief that claims innocent lives.
Suggestions ranging from taking up the issue on a war footing to launching a widespread awareness campaign against the menace, which leaves survivors shocked and bewildered, have come up from law-makers.
"An active (district-level) administration can address it through extensive awareness campaigns," Parliamentary Affairs Minister Saryu Roy told PTI.
"Sometimes personal rivalry and quarrels lead to branding their rivals (as 'witch') as a design to settle personal scores. Action should be taken immediately by the district administration in such cases," Roy said.
Echoing Roy's views, former minister and JMM MLA Nalin Soren said personal enmity was one of the reasons behind this atrocious belief though the superstition was high in tribal societies.
"The people should be made aware that witchcraft is a superstition that profits none. One should not believe Ojhas (witch doctors), who are illiterates," Soren said.
Ever since the August 7 incident claimed lives of five women in Ranchi district, the chief minister at different forums has been flagging the issue, saying a collective effort was needed to remove the scourge of superstitions.
Another former minister and BJP MLA Radhakrishna Kishore said that launching of awareness campaign in a big way was the first step in removing the scourge, besides making efforts to take people above the poverty line so that they could send their children to schools.
"In my constituency, children, who ought to be in schools, take cattle (of others) for grazing as they get two kg rice from the cattle owners, which supplements their impoverished families," Kishore said.
He cited an example how a person recently took a patient to an 'Ojha (witch doctor)' for treatment despite Kishore's advice to admit the patient to a hospital.
