Shock as woman beheads nephew on the altar

Police on Wednesday arrested a 25-year-old woman in Samanpur VDC-8 in the district on the charge of “sacrificing” a child.
Mahadevi Yadav allegedly beheaded her three-year-old nephew, Nitesh Kumar Yadav, at midnight Saturday. Police said Yadav has confessed to the crime.
Yadav told the Post that she sacrificed the boy following instructions from her guru with whom she had been learning witchcraft.
“I had been learning witchcraft from Chhabilal Yadav of Haraiya VDC for the past one month. He told me that my witchcraft skills will be complete only after the sacrifice of the nephew. Accordingly I took him at Bramhsthan and beheaded him on Saturday after a pooja,” she said.
Yadav then threw the boy’s head into the Bagmati river while she buried the torso in her ‘pooja’ room. Police have exhumed the body and taken it to Gaur for postmortem.
According to Yadav, Chhabilal further demanded that she sacrifice her eldest son as well.
The victim, a resident of Manpur-3 in the district, had been staying in hismaternal uncle’s house for the past one month.
Police got wind of Yadav’s “suspicious activities” after she informed them that she found the boy’s body. Earlier, she had registered a complaint with the police saying that the boy had gone missing. SP Thule Rai told a press meet on Wednesday that Chhabilal and Yadav’s family members are at large. Villagers said Mahadevi was a normal woman and that she did not have a history of mental illness that they knew of.
The incident has left the local people and rights activists shell-shocked. “We are shocked to hear the news at a time when incidents of torture against women for allegedly practicing witchcraft are on the rise in the region,” said rights activists Bipin Gautam.