Atrocity against Ram Kumari Magar has been revealed just a few days after Ash Maya Tamang of Dandakharka, Makawanpur was beaten to death by locals on May 16. “I was returning home from work. The villagers started thrashing me blaming me of casting black magic on a girl as I got near my home,” Magar recalled the last month´s incident. [break]
Magar, whose husband is working abroad, said she was accused of casting spell on the girl while playing with her daughter Sharmila. “I pleaded with them to not beat me and rather kick me out of the village after my husband returns. But they covered my head with a cloth, twisted my neck and attacked me all over my body,” Magar complained.
“They tried to strangle me but I somehow survived. I couldn´t move for a week and am still taking medicines,” she added showing scars of wounds that have yet to heal. She has been troubled by locals for three years but this time they attacked her physically.
“I go out for work and my daughter´s friends play at home with her. I return home in the evening. I don´t know how I can cast spell on them. Does somebody become a witch just for being poor?” she asked. She claimed that the villagers even threatened to torch her house. “I slept many a nights fearing they might kill me,” she revealed.
She said the locals haven´t even allowed her to go to police and the police released the assaulters when a local women´s group took them to the police station. Area Police Office, Tandi, however, denied to have received any complaint from Magar.
“The local women brokered a deal promising me a compensation of Rs 10,000. But I have yet to receive any,” she said. “We had asked her to sign the deal in return for medical expenses, but she has yet to recover,” conceded Mahadevi Khatiwada, a local women´s leader.
Magar claimed that the locals have been calling her husband abroad and telling him that she was having an illicit relationship with another man and even saying that she has gone mad. “I have gathered strength to live only after my husband assured that he has not lost faith in me,” she said.
“I am under immense stress due to the stigma and have lost appetite. People ask different questions even at work,” she confided and demanded stringent action against the assaulters.
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