Witches are still hunted in India—and blinded and beaten and killed

AT LEAST Ramkanya Sen is alive. The grandmother spent three weeks locked in a windowless storeroom in the searing heat, refusing to eat, until a tip-off alerted a journalist to her predicament. The rescue came just in time, say doctors who revived Ms Sen (pictured) at a government hospital in Bhilwara, a small city in southern Rajasthan. Sent home in August, she is still weak, shaken and disoriented, but safe for now.

Indian police records suggest that on average more than 150 less lucky women die every year for the same reason that Ms Sen was locked away: being fingered as a dayan (witch). They are burned, hacked or bludgeoned to death, typically by mobs made up of their neighbours and, sometimes, their own relatives. Ritual humiliation often precedes death. A suspected witch may expect to be stripped naked, smeared with filth, dragged by her hair and forced to eat excrement. Kanya Devi, from a village 120km north of Bhilwara, had all those things done to her on August 2nd. The 40-year-old mother of two was also blinded with red-hot coals and severely beaten. She did not survive.