The
couple and their six children were reportedly sleeping in their mud home in a village in Odisha's Keonjhar district when a mob armed with axes
broke in and attacked them early on Monday.
Two of the children survived and are being treated in hospital.
Two of the children survived and are being treated in hospital.
Odisha's
Director General of Police Sanjeev Marik said two of the nine people
arrested were relatives of the victims and had blamed them for a
spate of illnesses among infants in the village.
“This
heinous act is done because of the (incorrect) beliefs of people and
many of these beliefs often have ulterior motives behind them,”
Marik told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Accordind to Marik, the nine had been charged with murder and other offences under
Odisha's Prevention of Witch Hunting Act.
In
a separate incident, police recovered the remains of a man who was
beaten to death and burnt by a mob last week over allegations of
sorcery in Odisha's Rayagada district. Ten people have been arrested.
The
practice of branding men and women as witches and assaulting or
killing them is still common is some parts of India, particularly
among tribal communities, although it is illegal.
There
were 160 cases of murders linked to witch hunts in 2013, and 119 in
2012, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
Reuters
