An Indian couple
and four of their children were hacked to death by a mob of villagers who
accused them of practicing witchcraft and making their children sick, police in
the eastern state of Odisha said on Monday.
The victims were asleep
in their mud house in the hamlet of Lahanda in Keonjhar district, when a group of around five
people armed with axes broke in.
The suspects, believed to
be relatives of the family, accused the victims of being behind for a spate of
frequent illnesses among infants in the village, said police.
District Superintendent
of Police Kavita Jalan said two surviving children alerted
authorities.
The police reached the
village in the early hours of Monday to find the mutilated bodies in pools of
blood, an axe abandoned inside the hut, and a young boy still alive.
"The eight-year-old boy was found by police
gasping between the dead bodies," Jalan told Thomson Reuters
Foundation, adding that a search was being conducted to find the suspects, who
had fled the village after the incident.
The practice of branding
men and women as witches and assaulting or killing them remains common is some
parts of India, particularly among tribal communities, despite there being a
law against it.
- Reuters
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