Guwahati: The Assam police recently cracked a nearly four-year human sacrifice case, arresting five men on April 4 for their alleged involvement in the ritual which was performed near the iconic Kamakhya temple in Guwahati.
Kamakhya temple is considered a centre of tantric practices and is visited by millions of devotees every year. It is one of the 51 Shakti Pitha, which are significant pilgrimage destinations spread across India. According to Hindu mythology, Kamakhya is the spot where the female anatomical part of Shiva’s first wife Sati fell when her body was dismembered by Vishnu to stop Shiva, who in a terribly tumultuous state of mind was about to destroy the universe while carrying his wife’s corpse.
During the ten-day autumnal Durga Puja festival, it is routine for devotees to offer animal sacrifice. Male buffaloes, goats and pigeons are slaughtered during the eighth and ninth days of the festival.
The main temple is surrounded by individual temples dedicated to the ten Mahavidyas of Saktism.
The five people who were apprehended were identified for the first time in front of the press by Diganta Borah, the Guwahati police commissioner. They are Mata Prasad Pandey who was arrested from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh; Suresh Paswan from Jalukbari area, Guwahati; Kanu Acharya aka Kanu Tantric also from Guwahati; Raju Baba from Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh; and Pradip Pathak from Mathura, Uttar Pradesh.
The sensational “Human Sacrifice” case of Kamakhya in the year 2019 is being solved. @GuwahatiPol has arrested 5 persons all are ‘Baba’s and a mastermind Pradip Pathak who is an employee of #MadhyaPradesh. The victim was from West Bengal pic.twitter.com/paJRUeENf5
— Julee Bezbaruah.Guwahati (@JuleeBezbaruah) April 4, 2023
The accused were arrested almost four years after the state police formed a special team to solve the case. The killing of the 64-year-old woman, according to the police, happened in June 2019 during the period of Ambubachi, an annual festival that celebrates the goddess’s menstrual cycle.
Over lakhs of devotees from all walks of life across India and to some extent devotees from other countries throng the tantric site to observe the rituals when the doors of the ten temples are closed for five days.
Borah, addressing the media on Tuesday, said that Pradip was the mastermind behind the alleged human sacrifice and was utterly superstitious in his beliefs.
“We formed a special team and focused on the unsolved murder. The corpse was found with the head decapitated. The body was identified by the woman’s son, who recognised a tattoo on her body,” the commissioner said.
The police found that Mata Prasad was living in another person’s house in a village named Sitalakuchi in Cooch Behar, West Bengal. The special team raided the house of the owner, where Pandey often stayed. “We got to know that he was in Jabalpur, tracked him and arrested him with help from Madhya Pradesh police on March 25,” said Borah.
He also added, “The special team took Pandey to Guwahati, where he was interrogated and revealed the names of the other accused.”
One of the other accused, Pathak, was a government employee and was working as an executive for a cooperative society in Uttar Pradesh.
When the police raided the house at Sitalakuchi village, they found a sack which contained the victim’s clothes, Aadhaar card, mobile phone and other items. According to Borah, Pandey had told the owner that the sack contained his clothes, and he would pick them up when he returned.
Borah added, “The plot was hatched at Bhootnath cremation grounds in Guwahati. Pradip believed in occultism. He met a baba from north India during the 2019 Ambubachi. The other accused converged at Bhootnath cremation grounds in Guwahati and purchased a machete.”
He said that the victim was accompanied by two other women and a baba from Bengal for a midnight Tantric occult ritual at Bhootnath. “We also know that there were 12 other people who were present at Bhootnath grounds. It was Pradip who engineered the human sacrifice plot. They took the victim from Bhootnath to the steps of Jai Durga Mandir at Kamakhya and committed the crime. We are investigating who pinned her down, got hold of her hands and legs, and who beheaded her with the machete. ”
The accused will probably be tried under the anti-superstition Assam Witch Hunting (Prohibition, Prevention and Protection) Act 2015.
Widespread condemnation
Jagadish Bhuyan of Assam Jatiya Parishad, a political party, condemned the incident. “This incident is a stain on mankind. This is not what Hinduism’s actual concept of dharma teaches. Real dharma is truth, humanity and being virtuous. What the five men did was an act of sin. It can never be forgiven. Such horrendous acts are an offshoot of religious fundamentalism. I condemn all forms of religious fundamentalism. We at AJP condemn the act. Lately, we have been witnessing religious fundamentalism across India,” said Bhuyan.
The alleged case of human sacrifice was also met with serious condemnation from Ellora Vigyan Manch (EVM), an anti-superstitious organisation that is involved in spreading scientific temperament across the state and for organ donation.
“We at EVM seriously condemn such acts of savagery. Even in this age of scientific development, such medieval religious beliefs persist. Thugs and con men in the guise of ‘holy men’ carry out such barbaric crimes. The absence of scientific temper amongst large sections of people enables such acts and the exploitation of people. Past governments have done little to put an end. On the contrary, the present ruling dispensation at the centre and in the state of Assam has been patronising and promoting superstitions and blind beliefs in various forms. A Central law is needed to curb such acts of savagery. Awareness campaigns for scientific temper are required,” said Isfaqur Rahman.
Records about Kamakhya can be traced back thousands of years. Ancient texts like Kalika Puran and Yogini Tantra mention the legend of Kamakhya. However, history is quite vague on whether acts of human sacrifices were committed or not.
Nevertheless, that has not stopped people from trying to commit acts of human sacrifice. In 2003, a one-and-a-half-year-old toddler was rescued by devotees and by temple authorities when a quack tried to sacrifice the child.
The travelogue of French explorer Jean-Baptiste Chevalier describes the ritual sacrifice of animals at the temple. He adds that in the past, humans were also sacrificed.
The travelogue is titled Adventures of Jean-Baptiste Chevalier in Eastern India (1752-1765). It was translated into English by Caroline Dutta-Baruah and by Jean Deloche and was first published in India in 2008. The authors describe the explorer’s visit to Kamakhya as:
“Goaty (Guwahati) is one of the largest cities of the kingdom… The city is located at the foot of a hill on the bank of the Barampoutou (The Brahmaputra). On the top of the hill is the much-revered pagoda.”
Chevalier says the king gave him permission to attend the sacrifice. He says:
“What a surprise it was to see an immense park surrounded with fences containing a couple (male/female) each of all species of quadrupeds and birds known in the entire kingdom. All the governors of the provinces and the chiefs of the village have to provide their share and send it to the pagoda every three years. When the time arrives for the sacrifices, this entire fauna is immolated at the altar of the goddess. In the past, it was not only animals that had their throats cut, but also a man and a woman, who were part of the ceremonials.” (sic)
