{"id":7175,"date":"2022-11-02T08:24:05","date_gmt":"2022-11-02T02:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=7175"},"modified":"2025-03-28T17:44:17","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T12:14:17","slug":"anti-superstition-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/anti-superstition-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Superstition Laws"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>About Anti-Superstition Laws:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>As per the 2021 report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), six deaths were linked to human sacrifices, while witchcraft was the motive for 68 killings in the country.<\/li>\n<li>The maximum number of witchcraft cases were reported from Chhattisgarh (20), followed by Madhya Pradesh (18) and Telangana (11). Kerala saw two cases of human sacrifice.<\/li>\n<li>In 2020, India saw 88 deaths due to witchcraft and 11 died as part of \u2018human sacrifices\u2019, the NCRB report states.<\/li>\n<li>In India, there is no central law that exclusively deals with crimes related to witchcraft, superstition, or occult-inspired activities.<\/li>\n<li>In the absence of a nationwide legislation, a few States have enacted laws to counter witchcraft and protect women from deadly \u2018witch-hunting\u2019.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>State Laws:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Bihar:<\/strong>\u00a0Bihar was the first State to enact a law to prevent witchcraft, identification of a woman as a witch and \u201celiminate torture, humiliation and killing of women.\u201d The Prevention of Witch (Daain) Practices Act came into force in October 1999.\n<ul>\n<li>Anyone who identifies a person as a \u201cwitch\u201d and acts to aid this identification can face a jail term of up to three months, or a fine of \u20b91,000, or both.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jharkhand:<\/strong>\u00a0A similar law was passed in Jharkhand in 2001 \u2014 the Prevention of Witch (Daain) Practices Act.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Chhattisgarh:<\/strong>\u00a0The State enacted the Chhattisgarh Tonahi (witch) Pratadna Nivaran Act in 2005.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Odisha:<\/strong>\u00a0The Odisha Prevention of Witch-Hunting Bill was passed by the Assembly in 2013. The bill provides penalties for a witch doctor, or a person claiming to be a black magician.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Maharashtra:<\/strong>\u00a0In Maharashtra, the Maharashtra Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and other Inhuman, Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act, 2013 was passed after the murder of anti-superstition activist Dr. Narendra Dabholkar.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Rajasthan:<\/strong>\u00a0Rajasthan enacted the Rajasthan Prevention of Witch-Hunting Act in 2015 to \u201cprovide for effective measures to tackle the menace of witch-hunting and prevent the practice of witchcraft.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>Assam:<\/strong>\u00a0The Assam Witch Hunting (Prohibition, Prevention and Protection) Act, 2015, which received the President\u2019s assent in 2018, prohibits witch hunting completely.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Karnataka:<\/strong>\u00a0The latest law was passed in Karnataka where the Karnataka Prevention and Eradication of Inhuman Evil Practices and Black Magic Act, 2017 came into effect in January 2020.\n<ul>\n<li>The law bans several practices related to black magic and superstition, like forcing a person to walk on fire at religious festivals and the practice of piercing rods from one side of the jaw to the other.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Source :\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/epaper.thehindu.com\/Home\/ShareArticle?OrgId=GKPAF1SCD.1&amp;imageview=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">The Hindu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In India, there is no central law that exclusively deals with crimes related to witchcraft, superstition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":7176,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}