Police in India detained five people on Friday over the alleged ritual sacrifice of a seven-year-old boy to bring good luck to a public school.
At the hostel where he resided in Hathras, not far from the nation’s renowned Taj Mahal, the deceased was discovered dead in his bed on Sunday night.
Police claimed that school director Dinesh Baghel concealed the body in the trunk of his car rather than calling the authorities.
Baghel’s father killed the child before performing a black magic ritual, police officer Himanshu Mathur told AFP.
“The boy was meant to be taken to an altar as part of a ritual, but got killed before the ceremony could be completed,” he stated.
According to Mathur, Baghel and his father were taken into custody, along with three other educators from the school.
According to claims in the local media, Mathur withheld additional information about the child’s cause of death and was examining the body after a post-mortem.
Between 2014 and 2021, the Indian National Crime Records Bureau reported 103 incidents of human sacrifice in the country.
Ritual killings are more common and typically carried out to appease deities in tribal and isolated areas where witchcraft and the occult are prevalent.
In 2019, a machete fatally chopped off the head of a 64-year-old woman who had visited a shrine in the far northeast of India. Five men were taken into custody by the police last year.
The suspected ringleader, according to the police, was celebrating his brother’s death anniversary by performing a religious ceremony.
