The denied grief of the families of Dalit and Adivasi women accused of witchcraft in West Bengal

Rani Kisku told The wire“Now we’re afraid they might kill us too.” Kisku said this shortly after her mother Lodgi was beaten to death by neighbors in Harisara village in West Bengal after she was accused of being a witch.

Witch hunt is a form of gender-based violence. Women, often from marginalized communities, are falsely branded as “daains” (witches) and violently attacked when misfortunes such as disease or poor harvests occur in the community. However, witch hunting does not only have its roots in superstition. It is a tool used by men to intentionally deprive women of their land, their dignity and their lives.

In Rani’s case, the family was far too afraid of retaliation and further violence to mourn. Instead of dealing with the loss of Lodgi, they had to deal with who the mob might want to target next. The details of the crime are well documented. Lodgi Kisku, 54, and Dolly Soren, 40, were killed on September 13, 2024, just before the Karam Puja festival. A local mob dragged them out, tied them up and murdered them on suspicion of witchcraft before throwing their bodies into a canal.

To say her mother’s name publicly in the village square would have resulted in immediate and violent retribution and made her grief a burden.

The police ultimately arrested fifteen people. However, the legal documents ignore one of the many devastating consequences of the crime: Rani was completely forbidden from holding a funeral. To say her mother’s name publicly in the village square would have resulted in immediate and violent retribution and made her grief a burden.

When grief is silenced

The pattern repeats itself continuously throughout the region. Consider the violence in Chapuri village in Purilia on the night of Kali Puja. Padabi hillsa 37-year-old woman – and the only educated woman in her marital household – was hacked to death by her own relatives in front of her thirteen-year-old daughter. The extended family had labeled her a Daain for five years simply because a brother-in-law had died of an undiagnosed neurological disease.

However, her daughter cannot talk about her trauma. Tudu’s husband cannot publicly defend or acknowledge his wife’s murder, knowing that this would be perceived by the village as an admission of his own complicity in the witchcraft she is accused of.

Official figures show a grim reality. According to the latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)India included 85 witchcraft-motivated murders in 2022 And 74 the following year. While States like Jharkhand and Odisha have the most common cases of witch hunts and there have been numerous such cases in West Bengal too.

But if the state only records the murders, the psychological consequences are completely ignored. Denying families the right to grieve is not a side effect of violence; it is one of the main goals. The first step is murder. The second step is to completely destroy the memory of the victim’s social existence by forcing their families to remain silent and hiding their grief.

Divergent deletion

The methods of enforcing this silence depend heavily on the population structure. The tactics used against the family of a Dalit victim are in stark contrast to those used against the families of Adivasi survivors. A silent, tacit boycott of the victim’s family is taking place in Dalit communities across Bengal. A panchayat rarely issues a formal decree against mourning. Instead, the neighbors simply disappear and turn their backs on them. Anyone who mentions the name of the deceased is immediately confronted with a change of subject.

Women, especially widows, are often branded as “witches” by male relatives, which is a method of violent land grabbing.

Bereaved relatives quickly learn that grieving must take place indoors, behind closed doors. Additionally, women, especially widows, are often branded as “witches” by male relatives violent land grabbing. In such cases, the silence imposed on the families ensures that the perpetrators can recover the stolen property without further resistance from the traumatized families.

Adivasi women face a different reality. The largest tribal community in West Bengal are the Santals. Among them, mourning is communal and involves specific communal ritual practices. An accusation of witchcraft completely disrupts this cultural practice. Once a woman branded as a witch is murdered, the label “witch” ensures that she is permanently excluded from memory.

Ultimately, the families of Dalit and Adivasi women murdered over witchcraft allegations, whether through social boycott or ritual exclusion, carry emotional burdens that they cannot express publicly. While recent sociological literature successfully identifies the patriarchal structures and health deficits associated with these crimes, it consistently overlooks the profound psychological impact of denied and silenced grief.

A phenomenon overlooked by the state

The state apparatus offers no remedy against this specific form of psychological violence. In fact, West Bengal still lacks a separate law against witch-hunting. Since law enforcement cannot address enforced societal silence, they simply deal with the murders, leaving families to deal with the effects of police surveillance of their grief and forced silence on their own.

The silent machinery of a witch hunt, the rumor mill, the complete destruction of a woman’s social standing and the forcing of her family into silence is neither seen nor recognized by the law.

The silent machinery of a witch hunt, the rumor mill, the complete destruction of a woman’s social standing and the forcing of her family into silence is neither seen nor recognized by the law. However, there are no specific laws against witch hunting in Bengal, even if there are special laws like the one in AssamBanning witch hunting and making it a non-criminal offense can only have a limited effect.

This approach, which focuses solely on punishment, cannot address the psychological and emotional violence inflicted on victims and their families. A law cannot force a village to attend a funeral. And nothing can change the fact that a daughter is not allowed to cry publicly about the brutal murder of her mother.

A politics of mourning

In her Literary discussion of witchcraftMahasweta Devi focuses on the intersection of caste, gender and superstition in witch hunting. The violence is not just physical or limited to the murder of the victim; it extends to the social death of the victim – the way the village erases everything the woman ever was and reduces her to the label of a “witch.”

The grief of the families in Harisara and Chapuri remains unheard. The broader feminist discourse on witch hunting often speaks of justice and redress, but rarely of the devastating effects of denying the right to mourn. Centering Dalit and Adivasi lives in our feminism requires that grief is not reduced to a footnote.

When a mob deprives him of the basic and deeply human right to cry, perform funeral rituals and prevent the extinction of the deceased, it steals something that no law or court can ever give back. Rani Kisku was not allowed to mourn the brutal murder of her mother and her life that was violently ended. Without acknowledging the violence of this particular brand of forced silence and denied grief, any understanding of the violence underlying a witch hunt is incomplete. After a witch hunt, the violence doesn’t stop for the families of the dead; it simply mutates into something quieter.

Roshan is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His doctoral thesis examines witch hunting as a form of gender-based violence in West Bengal. Research interests include gender-based violence, ritual economics, caste-gender intersectionality and legal impunity. As a recipient of the 2025 National Youth Icon Award in the field of theater and performance, he has been working on performance as a site of political and cultural research for over a decade.