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Nepal police arrest 11 over human sacrifice

Sunday, 26 July 2015 4:08 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 26 July 2015 5:32 PM ]

This file photo shows Nepali shamans performing a superstitious ritual in a village on the outskirts of the capital, Kathmandu.

Nepal police have arrested eleven villagers in connection with the murder of a 10-year-old child based on superstitious beliefs.

Local media reports said on Sunday that a suspected father of a sick teenager slit the throat of a boy named, Jeevan Kohar, in a village in Nawalparasi district.

The father believed that the horrific killing would cure his son's sickness.

Jeevan Kohar was lured into his death trap on Tuesday with a packet of biscuits and the promise of 50 rupees (50 US cents), media said.

"We have arrested 11 people, including four women, for murdering a ten-year-old boy," said Nal Prasad Upadhyaya, the Nawalparasi police superintendent.

"All the villagers say the boy was killed in a case of human sacrifice,” he said, adding, “We cannot confirm anything until our investigations are completed."

Local media reported that one of the suspects had confessed to the crime, saying the sick teenager was under the spell of a malevolent ghost and needed to be "pacified with human flesh".

A shaman, or local witch doctor, in Nawalparasi district, where the incident took place, had reportedly advised the perpetrators who adamantly “believed in witchcraft" to commit the human sacrifice to free the teenager from the "spell of a ghost".

Shaman witch doctors are still common in the Himalayan nation where villages are often cut off from modern science and healthcare.

A shaman is perceived to interact with ghosts and channel their transcendental energies into this world.

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