By IANS,
Raipur: Superstition-driven residents of a village in Chhattisgarh summoned five witch doctors to a government school to treat three girls who ocassionally fell unconscious in the classroom, an official said Saturday.
The witch doctors were summoned after villagers discussed the matter with the girls’ parents and the school teachers, said Santram Nagvanshi, the headman of Loharasi village in Dhamtari district, some 110 km from here.
“The three girls, students of class 8, seem to be influenced by a witch as they ocassionally behaved abnormally in school for the past four months and on a few ocassions, they fell unconscious. Their parents were informed by the teachers and they were examined by doctors but no disease was detected,” Nagvanshi told IANS on the phone.
“Since we thought the witch’s influence may affect other students, the villagers unanimously decided, after talking with the teachers to call the witchcraft practitioners to the school itself,” he added.
The villagers called the five witch doctors Thursday from Mahasamund district.
“They treated the girls at a hour-long ceremony within the school complex,” villager Gopal Devangan said, adding that the girls had “now been finally freed from the impact of evil forces”.
In Chhattisgarh’s impoverished tribal dominated areas, treatment by witch doctors is routinely sought, with people thronging them for curing common colds, as also diseases like AIDS and cancer.