The state cabinet on Friday gave its nod for the long-pending bill to combat evils of human sacrifice and witchcraft which are rampant in both urban and rural Maharashtra.
The state cabinet on Friday gave its nod for the long-pending bill to combat evils of human sacrifice and witchcraft which are rampant in both urban and rural Maharashtra. The government is planning to introduce the bill in the ongoing budget session.
The Democratic Front government has been intensely debating the issue for the past seven years. But individuals across the political spectrum often engaged in fault-finding to sabotage the bill in its initial stages. After much deliberation, the Prithviraj Chavan cabinet has decided to make changes to make the bill specific. In its new avatar the legislation will now be called Bill on human sacrifice and witchcraft.
The broadly used words ‘black magic’ or ‘blind faith’ have been replaced with human sacrifice and witchcraft. A senior cabinet minister in Congress said, “In a civilised society nobody can allow blind faith or black magic to continue. But the bill was often debated as some politicians feared its misuse against religious heads.”
Although the Congress, NCP, Shiv Sena and BJP in principle had given their consent to evolve such a legislation provided it does not interfere with religious rituals practised among the masses across state, the reference to godmen which was suggested by
non-government organisations to check exploitation of innocent people in the name of religion has been dropped from the legislation.
The new legislation emphasises that “individuals who conduct and perpetrate heinous crime like human sacrifice would be firmly dealt by the law”. It also stressed that “jadu tonna and aghori vidya (witchcraft) will be bracketed as a crime and attract imprisonment”.
The state government has been confronted with challenges as cases of human sacrifice were reported from Mumbai last year and these growing incidents have left the state administration worried.
“Law alone is not going to help in bringing the changes. There should be massive awareness campaign to dissuade the people from resorting to such barbaric methods like human sacrifice and witchcraft,” said a senior secretary in the home department. At the meeting,senior ministers demanded that the law should also be extended to deal with godmen who exploit people financially and physically.
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