Debunking the seven myths of witch-hunting
In this post, Executive Director of EquiVoice Alliance Foundation, Neelesh Kumar Singh, invites us to consider 7 myths around witch-hunting and why it’s so important that each of them is busted
Image credit: Deep AI
by Neelesh Kumar Singh
05 February 2025
Some argue that witch-hunting is not exclusively a crime against women, pointing out that men too have occasionally been targeted in the name of witchcraft. This is partially true, but only superficially.
Men who are branded or attacked are usually those accused of supporting, defending, or standing by women labelled as witches. They are punished not for being witches themselves, but for challenging or disrupting the violence directed at women.
The data makes the gendered nature of this crime unmistakably clear.
More than 93% of those branded, tortured, or killed as witches are women. There has been no formal data released by the NCRB for the years 2024 and 2025 so far. However, in Jharkhand alone, in 2023, 22 women were killed in the name of witch-hunting. This number represents lives lost not due to superstition or ignorance alone, but due to deeply entrenched systems of power and violence against women.
Witch-hunting is therefore not an incidental or gender-neutral crime. It is a crime against women, structurally, historically, and empirically.
Why Talk About Witch-Hunting Today?
I am raising this issue today not merely to restate its brutality, but to challenge the dominant explanations offered by academicians, development practitioners, and government agencies.
Over the years, a set of explanations has hardened into “common sense”:
Witch-hunting is about superstition
It is driven by alcohol consumption
It is a tribal or cultural issue
Ojhas are the main culprits
Poverty, lack of health services, or illiteracy are the root causes
These explanations are repeated so often that they have become the foundation on which policies, programmes, and funding strategies are built.
And that is precisely the problem.
Why Is Myth-Busting Necessary?
When strategies are built on incorrect or incomplete assumptions, the outcome is inevitable:
Resources are misdirected
Interventions remain superficial
Violence continues despite years of work
Survivors remain unprotected
Perpetrators remain unaccountable
If the foundation itself is flawed, then no amount of funding, manpower, or goodwill will solve the problem. We will keep addressing symptoms while leaving the disease untouched.
Witch-hunting will not end through:
Awareness campaigns alone
De-addiction drives alone
Health infrastructure alone
Cultural sensitisation alone
Because witch-hunting is not primarily a belief problem or a service-delivery problem.
It is a gendered crime, sustained by:
Patriarchal control over women
Collective sanction of violence
Social and institutional impunity
The disposability of women’s lives
The purpose of busting these myths is not academic debate. It is about rebuilding our understanding, so that:
Policies are grounded in reality
Interventions target power, not just behaviour
Justice, protection, and accountability are placed at the centre
Unless we confront the real nature of witch-hunting, our efforts will keep hitting the wrong side of the problem and the violence will continue, year after year, village after village.
That is why these myths must be dismantled. Not gently. But honestly.
The Seven Myths
Myth No. 1: Witch-hunting is done to grab the property of the targeted individual.
If that is true, why women are being targeted when they hardly enjoy any property rights? Why so many women, who have been hunted down in the name of witch, are the one with hardly any property? If property were the real motive, then men with land, titles, or assets would be the primary targets. But the ground reality shows the opposite. Many of the women killed or expelled do not own land, have no legal title, and have no effective control over property. In several cases, they were living on others’ land and had already lost claims to inheritance, had nothing tangible to ‘grab’. So the obvious question that arises is, if there is no property, what exactly is being grabbed?
Myth No. 2: Witch Hunting is done against women who are single, widows, elderly, or women without sons.
ok, if that is true, then why more than 75% of women, branded as witch, are the ones who are married and living with their husbands and children? Why some of the mothers are branded as witches by their own sons? The deeper truth is not about women being ‘alone’. When accusations begin, husbands often, stay silent or participate under pressure or abandon their wives to avoid social boycott. Same goes with sons too. They abandon their mother under pressure from elders, they are promised social acceptance, relief from blame, they fear being ostracized if they defend their mother.
It is not that the single women are targeted but they become single once they are branded.
Myth No. 3: Alcohol is the root cause of witch-hunting.
“If alcohol is banned, witch-hunting will stop.” This argument collapses the moment we examine it seriously. Let us be precise about alcohol’s role
It is true that, many perpetrators consume alcohol before committing violence. Alcohol is present in many violent crimes like robbery, murder, lynching, caste violence, and sexual assault. But we never say: “Robbery happens because of alcohol.” “Caste killings happen because of alcohol.” “Rape happens because of alcohol.” Instead, we ask: Who planned it? Who benefited? Who gave legitimacy? Who remained silent? So, why should witch-hunting be treated differently? Alcohol does not create violence; it removes restraint. Alcohol can lower inhibition, increase aggression already present, but alcohol cannot invent hatred, create misogyny, produce superstition, teach people whom to target. A man does not become a witch-hunter because he drank. He drinks because he is already willing to do violence.
It is dangerous to stop at alcohol. When we declare alcohol as the root cause, the perpetrator disappears. The narrative becomes: “They were drunk. It just happened.” This is not an analysis. This is excuse-making.
Myth No. 4: Witch-hunting happens due to a lack of education.
This is one of the most repeated explanations in policy and development spaces: people are illiterate, therefore they believe in witchcraft, therefore witch-hunting happens. However, this explanation falls apart when education trends and witch-hunting trends are juxtaposed.
Jharkhand’s literacy has risen sharply from 53.56% in 2001 to 66.41% in 2011, with female literacy increasing from 38.87% to 55.42%, and today around 62% of adult women and 81% of adult men are literate, yet witch-hunting has not vanished, with hundreds of witchcraft-motive murders recorded since 2001 and recent spikes continuing even in 2022–23. If lack of education were the root cause, rising literacy should have produced a steady decline towards zero; it has not.
Education may shape how misfortune is explained, but it does not automatically dismantle patriarchal control, collective sanction of violence, fear that silences witnesses, or impunity that protects perpetrators. More importantly, education is not neutral: its power lies in what is taught and whose values it reinforces. In rural Jharkhand, schools largely reproduce existing gender roles, caste hierarchies, obedience to authority, and silence around violence. Children of women branded as witches are harassed, boycotted, and taunted by peers; teachers often remain silent; families withdraw children to escape humiliation; and, under intense social pressure, some children distance themselves from or even publicly denounce their own mothers to survive. This is not ignorance; it is social conditioning. When education serves power rather than justice, it trains conformity, not resistance.
Education is not automatically emancipatory. It can also be a tool for reproducing violence. Witch-hunting persists not because education is absent, but because transformative education is absent. What is missing is gender-just curriculum, teachers trained to intervene, schools as protective spaces, and institutional courage to stand with survivors’ children. Education can either challenge witch-hunting, or train the next generation to participate in it. The difference lies in what and whose values are being taught.
Myth No. 5: Witch-hunting is a “tribal practice”.
This myth rests on an unspoken assumption: “Tribal communities are backward, superstitious, closer to the cave era.” That assumption itself is a form of structural violence. In Jharkhand, all 932 women identified as having been branded as witches, during between the year 2017 to 2019 in select South Chhotanagur districts, belong to all castes and religions, in the same proportion in which those communities exist in this region. This means, Tribal women are affected, so are Dalit women, so are OBC women, so are women from dominant castes, so are women across religious communities.
Witch-branding does not discriminate by caste or religion.
By labelling witch-hunting as “tribal”, violence is ethnicised, responsibility is shifted from society to “culture”, the state and dominant society escape accountability. This is the same logic used historically to justify colonial “civilising missions”, forced assimilation, surveillance and control of Adivasi lives.
Once we say “this is a tribal practice”, the crime becomes folklore, the violence becomes tradition, the perpetrators become victims of “backwardness”. This framing ensures poor investigations, weak prosecutions, and policy solutions that target communities instead of power structures.
This myth persists so strongly because it comforts dominant caste society ‘This is not us’, it fits colonial era stereotypes, it allows governments to fund “awareness programs” instead of ensuring justice, and it avoids confronting violence inside non-tribal households and villages. In short, it protects privilege by stigmatizing the marginalized.
Calling witch-hunting a tribal problem is not analysis; it is racism disguised as concern.
Myth No. 6: Witch Hunting is an issue of superstition.
This framing suggests: People don’t know better, violence is accidental, education alone will solve the problem. But superstition by itself does not explain targeted, repeated, gendered violence. If witch-hunting were merely about superstition, then, everyone who believes in witches would be attacked, accusations would be random, not patterned, and men, children, and powerful people would be targeted equally. But this is not what happens. Instead, we see: specific women being named again and again, violence following social conflicts, not sudden beliefs, and collective decisions, rituals, and punishments. Superstition may exist, but it does not act on its own. A superstition can provide language to explain misfortune, offer symbols to justify fear and give ritual form to violence. But superstition cannot decide who should be punished, it cannot mobilise a village, it cannot silence police, leaders and neighbours, it cannot sustain violence over decades.
Calling it superstition makes violence sound innocent. It shifts the focus to awareness campaigns. It allows the state to act as educator and not enforcer. It replaces justice with sensitisation. Superstition explains belief. It does not explain brutality.
Myth No. 7: Ojhas (Witch Doctor) are the main culprits; lack of formal health services causes witch-hunting
This argument goes like this: People fall sick → there is no hospital → they go to the ojha → the ojha names a witch → violence follows.
This sounds logical. But it collapses the moment we examine how witch-branding actually happens. Why the “ojha-centric” explanation is incomplete and misleading?
Ojhas do not act in isolation. An ojha does not arrest anyone. An ojha does not beat, strip, or kill alone. An ojha does not enforce social boycott. Witch-hunting requires a mad crowd, elders’ approval, neighbours’ participation and silence or complicity of families and institutions. If ojhas were the real cause, then every ojha-visited illness would end in witch-hunting. It does not.
Ojhas do not invent targets, they confirm suspicions. In most cases: The “suspect” already exists, the woman is already disliked, feared, or resented, the name comes from the community, not the ojha
The ojha often only gives ritual legitimacy to a decision already made, speaks what the community is ready to hear. He does not create hostility, he formalises it.
Health infrastructure alone does not prevent witch-hunting. Jharkhand villages today often have: ANMs, ASHAs, Ambulances, Private clinics nearby, and CHCs, etc. Yet witch-branding continues. Why? Because witch-hunting is not about treatment failure. It is about finding someone to blame. Even in places with hospitals, deaths still occur, misfortunes still happen, fear still seeks a human target. Medicine treats disease. It does not dismantle social cruelty.
Making ojhas the main culprits protects real power. Blaming Ojhas let’s families escape responsibility. It Lets village leaders remain “neutral”. It lets perpetrators say “we were misled”. It lets the state say “we need more doctors, not justice”. It shifts witch-hunting from a crime to a service gap.
Ojhas exist in many societies. Witch-hunting exists only where: Women’s lives are negotiable, community punishment is accepted, law enforcement is weak or absent, and violence is collectively justified. Ojhas are enablers, not architects. Remove the ojha, and the community will find another ritual specialist. It will use dreams, signs, elders, or rumours. It will still name a woman because the need to punish remains.
Why this myth is politically convenient because it allows the system to say: “Build hospitals” instead of “protect women”, “Regulate ojhas” instead of “prosecute mobs” and “Improve awareness” instead of “ensure justice”. It converts a gendered atrocity into a development problem.
Ojhas do not cause witch-hunting. They operate within a society that is already willing to sacrifice women. Lack of health services may explain why people seek answers. It does not explain why women are chosen as punishment.
An ojha can name a witch only when society is ready to kill one.
Witch-Hunting: The Ultimate Weapon of Erasure
What I ultimately want to argue is this: witch-hunting is not just another crime against women. It is a carefully selected weapon, one that can be deployed to erase any crime against women.
Suppose a woman has been raped, and she or her well-wishers want to approach the police. Suppose a girl has been trafficked. Suppose a woman has not brought enough dowry. Suppose a man wants to marry someone else and discard his wife without giving her any alimony. Suppose a woman refuses a love proposal. Suppose she speaks up, resists, or threatens to expose violence.
In all these situations, any other form of violence would trigger law, outrage, witnesses, and accountability.
But witch-hunting offers something no other crime does.
You do not need weapons. You do not need proof. You do not need witnesses. You do not even need violence at first.
All you need is a story.
“I saw her transform into a cat and disappear.” “I saw her flying in the sky at night.” “She caused the illness.” “She is bringing misfortune.”
That is enough.
Once a woman is declared a witch:
every previous crime against her is retrospectively legitimised,
every future act of violence against her becomes justified,
every witness becomes silent,
and every perpetrator dissolves into the crowd.
No other crime has this power.
Witch-hunting can erase rape. It can erase trafficking. It can erase dowry violence. It can erase abandonment. It can erase threats. It can erase murder.
A Weapon Stronger Than Guns or Bombs
If your enemy is a man, you do not even need to target him directly.
Ask instead:
Does he have a mother?
A wife?
A sister?
Declare her a witch.
By destroying a woman, you destroy the man—socially, emotionally, politically. You break families. You silence resistance. You settle scores without ever touching the law.
What guns and bombs cannot do, because they leave evidence, bodies, and accountability, BUT...Witch-Hunting can.
It kills without killing. It punishes without punishment. It terrorises without fingerprints.
Violence Perfected
Witch-hunting is violence perfected.
It:
turns imagination into evidence,
turns belief into law,
turns community into executioner,
and turns fear into silence for generations.
This is why conviction rates are among the lowest. This is why families never speak. This is why entire villages “do not know what happened.”
Witch-hunting is not the absence of law. It is the most strategic way to bypass the law.
Until policies recognise witch-hunting as:
a weapon of erasure,
a tool to settle all forms of gendered violence,
and a deliberate system of impunity,
Every response will remain cosmetic.
Because we are not dealing with superstition, we are dealing with the most powerful weapon society has created to get away with violence against women.
Conclusion: Policy Failure Stems from Misdiagnosing the Problem
If witch-hunting is being used as a weapon, a mechanism that converts perpetrators into protectors in the eyes of the community and into uninformed actors in the eyes of the law, then current policy approaches are fundamentally misaligned with the nature of the crime.
Witch-hunting persists not because of lack of awareness, weak regulation of ritual practitioners, or alcohol consumption. It persists because it offers a highly effective pathway to impunity. It enables perpetrators to erase prior crimes, legitimise ongoing violence, silence witnesses, and disperse responsibility across the community, thereby neutralising criminal accountability at every stage.
In such a context, interventions focused primarily on awareness generation, de-addiction, or expanding health services are insufficient. These approaches assume that witch-hunting is driven by misinformation or service gaps. In reality, witch-hunting functions as a strategic tool of social control and dispute resolution, particularly against women, where formal legal processes are actively avoided.
As long as witch-hunting continues to:
socially reward perpetrators,
delegitimise victims,
intimidate witnesses,
and produce institutional inaction due to “lack of evidence”,
behaviour-change interventions alone will not reduce incidence or improve conviction rates.
Effective policy responses must therefore shift focus from belief correction to accountability creation. This requires recognising witch-hunting as:
a collective and premeditated crime,
a mechanism for settling gendered violence and social conflicts, and
a deliberate strategy to bypass formal justice systems.
Until witch-hunting is addressed as a problem of power, protection failure, and systemic impunity, investments in awareness and sensitisation, however well intentioned, will continue to yield limited results. Policy must move beyond educating communities to disrupting the conditions that make witch-hunting a viable and effective weapon.
(Author’s note: This article is based on field experience and data from India, particularly Jharkhand. While legal frameworks and cultural expressions differ across countries, the use of belief and community sanction to legitimise violence against women is a global phenomenon. Readers are encouraged to reflect on how similar mechanisms operate in their own contexts.)
Neelesh Kumar Singh is Executive Director of EquiVoice Alliance Foundation. She can be reached at neelesh@evafoundation.co.in.
