Compiled by C. ARUNO, JUNAID IBRAHIM and R. ARAVINTHAN
A young woman’s in-laws pointed a gun at her and forced her to consume powdered human bones in a black magic ritual in India, Malaysia Nanban reported.
The 29-year-old woman from Pune is a software engineer who got married in 2019. When the pandemic hit soon after, her husband’s family suffered financial losses and forced her to get cash and jewellery from her father under the guise of a dowry.
Dowries have been illegal in India since at least 1961 when the Dowry Prohibition Act was enacted.
The in-laws also began obsessing that the woman had not become pregnant despite four years into the marriage and began engaging in bizarre rituals to remedy this.
Believing in black magic, they brought in a shaman who conducted rituals with human bones.
When the woman refused to drink the human bone powder, she was threatened with a gun to her head and forced to comply.
She left her in-laws’ house soon after and lodged a police report over the abuse.
Her husband, the in-laws and the shaman have been booked under various offences.
The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.
