RITUAL KILLINGS
“WE DON’T KNOW WHAT HAS HAPPENED!”
Abhay Ohri, a tribal doctor and activist, received a call from a volunteer of Jay Adivasi Yuva Shakti, a tribal youth organisation that he heads in Ratlam, Madhya Pradesh. The panic-stricken volunteer asked Ohri to rush to the Ratlam Civil Hospital as soon as he could. “Rajaram Khadari’s body is here,” he said. “He is dead. Some ‘tantra-mantra’ was done on him.”
Ohri struggled to understand what he was being told. It was early in the morning on 20 February 2021, and he had just woken up. As he drove to the hospital in a hurry, thoughts of 27-year-old Rajaram Khadari crossed his mind. After him, it was only Rajaram who could become a doctor in their tribal village. Just a few days earlier, Rajaram had informed Ohri that he had finally been appointed as a government ayurvedic doctor after years of private practice. The colleagues had last met on the birthday of Rajaram’s two-year-old son, Adarsh. “It was just two months before his death,” Ohri told me when I met him in his clinic, in the summer of 2021.
Upon reaching the old white colonial building of the hospital, Ohri saw Rajaram’s body. His entire corpse was coloured in kumkum—a red turmeric powder used during rituals. The body also had lacchas, or ritual yellow threads, tied at numerous places. “I am a doctor, I have examined thousands of corpses,” Ohri told me. “I was scared to look at Rajaram.” Rajaram’s arms and legs had impressions suggesting he had been chained. There were also many marks of injury from sharp objects. His body was bleeding even after his death.
Before Ohri reached the hospital, the staff had found an identification card in Rajaram’s pocket. It belonged to his 28-year-old wife, Seema Katara. The staff members realised it was the same Seema who worked as a nurse in their hospital. They tried to call her, but her phone was switched off. No one from their family was responding to calls. “I realised something is very wrong,” Ohri said. “I immediately asked the police to check their house.”
After getting initial information, a few police officers from the nearest police station, Shivgarh, reached Rajaram’s village, Thikariya, at around 8 am. Right outside his ancestral home—two well-built blue buildings on both sides of the road—around nine women were swinging and chanting “Jai Ho.” All these women were relatives of Rajaram.
His parents, Thwari Bai and Kanhaiya Lal Khadari, had eight daughters and two sons—Rajaram and Vikram, who is 26 years old. While Santosh is the eldest daughter, it is their middle daughter, Tulsi Palasia, aged 40, who wields the most influence in the family. Tulsi is married to Radhey Shyam, and both live in Dharad village, about thirty-five kilometres from Thikariya. For the past three or four years, according to the police, she worked as a bhopa—a witch doctor. Tulsi believed that her 17-year-old son had supernatural powers and was an incarnation of Sheshnag, considered to be the king of all snakes. The Hindu deity Vishnu is often depicted resting on Sheshnag. Tulsi’s entire family, including her children Maya and another minor son, as well as Rahul, the son of her brother-in-law, were involved in the practice.
Bhopas are traditionally priest-singers in the Bhil tribal community. They perform in front of a phad—a long piece of cloth that serves as a portable temple, bearing various mantras and folk tales of local deities. Bhopas carry this phad along with them when invited by villagers to perform during times of sickness and misfortune.
When the police asked the chanting women to step aside, they threatened to curse the officers, claiming that they were manifestations of the Hindu goddess Durga. Sheena Khan, one of the police constables present that day, told me that no one could comprehend what was going on. The police decided to wait while reinforcements came in. Meanwhile, a crowd began assembling at the spot.
After ten minutes, someone inside opened a window for a few minutes. As Sheena approached the window, she saw two children sobbing. The police could also hear crying and shouting from inside.
“As we saw children inside, we were afraid of what might happen to them,” Sheena said. “God knows what was going on in that room.” Without further delay, the police decided to break the door and force their way in.
“I cannot forget what I saw there,” Sheena recalled. The room was filled with incense smoke, so much so that hardly anything was visible. There was blood, cracked coconuts, lemon, kumkum and kilos of burnt incense and wood. In one corner of the room, Tulsi’s daughter Maya was sitting on the stomach of Adarsh—the two-year-old son of Seema and Rajesh. Maya had the fingers of one hand inside Adarsh’s mouth, and held a sword in the other. Adarsh was already dead. In another corner, Tulsi was sitting on Thwari’s stomach, choking her at the neck while pulling her hair. Thwari was bleeding profusely from sword injuries. In a third corner, Vikram’s injured kids were screaming in horror while other family members held them. As the scene was broken up, Maya and Tulsi clung to the bodies of Adarsh and Thwari so tightly that it took three to five police officers to remove them.
“All of them were on their own trip,” Sheena told me. “Initially, they did not acknowledge police presence. Later, they started cursing us.” She recalled how the women were shouting that Seema was a daayan and a chudail—Hindi words for a witch. The women claimed that Seema had possessed Rajaram. If they killed the witch, Rajaram would come back to life.
That is when the police started searching for Seema. She was found on the other side of the road, in a room next to a cattle shed. She was injured, bleeding, unconscious but alive. Her parents had reached the place by then, and immediately took her to the hospital. A two-rupee coin was found stuck inside her throat, because of which she could not speak.
Among those arrested and charged with murder were Tulsi and her children including Maya and the son she believed to be the incarnation of Sheshnag. Rahul was also arrested, as were Rajaram’s youngest siblings, Vikram and Sagar.
“They were talking insensibly,” Hemant Parmar, the head constable at Shivgarh police station, said. “I do not know if they were possessed by some deity or they were just pretending, but this behaviour went on for two days, 21 and 22 February, while they were kept in police custody.”
During that time, Tulsi and Maya claimed that Seema was possessed by Chainpura. Chainpura, a village around fifteen kilometres away from Thikariya, is home to the temples of various tribal deities. Ohri told me that Chainpura is considered a spirit in the area. Tulsi and Maya told the police that, on Sheshnag’s instructions, they were
