NEW DELHI (Sputnik) — The lynching took place near Agra, where the Taj Mahal is located, on Tuesday night as the old woman stepped out of her house to relieve herself. The woman lost her way in the darkness and reached a nearby colony where a girl sleeping outside her house spotted her.
The old woman, who was wearing a white sari, scared the young girl out of her wits. Soon after, locals gathered at the location and started beating her up, taking her for indulging in ‘witch-craft'.
The woman's family members took her to an Agra hospital from where she was discharged after first-aid but succumbed to her injuries on the way home, according to PTI.
"She was beaten after they found her loitering in a nearby village. Someone accused her of being a witch and later linked her to the hair-cutting incidents," Agra police chief Dinesh Chandra Dubey told TV crews.
The police have registered a murder case, but remain concerned as it marks the first casualty of a widespread panic in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and parts of Rajasthan where reports of women's braids being mysteriously chopped off have come out.
An old woman beaten to death in a UP village on suspicion of being a witch. India feels sometimes like a very savage country.
— Tavleen Singh (@tavleen_singh) 3 августа 2017 г.
Since last month, at least 55 women across five north Indian states have reported waking up to find their braids mysteriously chopped off. Four new cases were reported in New Delhi's outskirts on Wednesday, just days after half-a-dozen similar cases were reported in Gurgaon, south of the capital.
The series of unexplained attacks have been reported mostly from rural areas, where superstitious beliefs spark hysteria and allegations of witchcraft. But, none of the victims have been harmed in any physical way or robbed.
Mass panic over braid-chopping: no surprises at all, it's a Dalit woman who is lynched as 'witch' in Agra village https://t.co/Ln41Ca0xZf
— Kavita Krishnan (@kavita_krishnan) 3 августа 2017 г.
The Delhi Police is treating the assaults as crimes but have not been able to so far generate any leads and believe that cases of copycat attacks could be behind the bizarre chain of events.
