Indian police have arrested five men suspected of carrying out a human sacrifice, nearly four years after the finding of the victim’s headless corpse at a Hindu temple.
Shanti Shaw, 64, was murdered and decapitated with a blade in 2019 after visiting the shrine in Guwahati, India’s remote northeast.
Police made no progress in the case until Shaw’s corpse was identified in January, prompting a fresh probe that led to the arrest of several suspects, with others still at large.
“The five planned the killing of the woman,” Guwahati police commissioner Diganta Barah told reporters late Tuesday. “A total of 12 people took part.”
Barah said the alleged ringleader, Pradeep Pathak, 52, had orchestrated the killing as part of a religious rite to mark the anniversary of his brother’s death.
“The accused apparently believed that the sacrifice would appease the soul of the deceased,” he added.
Pathak and four others were taken into custody between March 25 and April 1, with police still hunting for their remaining seven accomplices.
India’s National Crime Records Bureau lodged 103 cases of human sacrifice in the country between 2014 and 2021.
Ritual killings are usually conducted to appease deities and are more common in tribal and remote areas, where belief in witchcraft and the occult is widespread.
Last year two men were arrested for allegedly killing a six-year-old boy in the capital New Delhi.
The culprits, both construction workers, told police they murdered the child as an offering to the Hindu god Shiva to get rich.
