A 58-year-old woman was assaulted and forced to swallow excreta by her own relatives on the suspicion of being a witch at a village in Dumka district.

The incident took place on the night of December 3 at Madhuvatikar village in Dumka’s Jarmundi block, around 340km from capital Ranchi.

The woman and her husband mustered the courage to lodge a complaint at Jarmundi thana on December 5 over fear of reprisal from their influential relatives residing in the same village.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau data for 2019, Jharkhand ranked third in witch-hunting cases and recorded 15 murders related to the crime. Another tribal state of Chhattisgarh with 22 witch-hunting deaths tops the list.

Jharkhand police data show that 259 people were murdered on the suspicion of practising witchcraft between 2015 and 2021, of which 211 were women. A total of 4,680 cases were registered in the state during this period.

Jarmundi thana officer-in-charge Nawal Kishore Singh said the woman has named nine persons, all her distant relatives from the same village, in the FIR.

“The woman has in the complaint revealed that nine persons, all her relatives, had been harassing her on the charge of practising witchcraft for several days. There was a dispute between the woman and the other members on November 22, November 29 and on the night of December 3 when they assaulted the woman, forced her to eat excreta and threatened her of dire consequences if she complained to the police. We are carrying out raids to nab the culprits besides probing the allegation,” Singh said.

A case has been lodged under the Prevention of Witch (DAAIN) Practices Act.