The police took the accused woman into custody along with her.
Pathanamthitta:
Days after the horrors of a “human sacrifice” case in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta were revealed, the state police have now arrested a woman from the same district for practicing occult rituals using children.
Pathanamthitta Deputy Superintendent of Police S Nandakumar confirmed that the accused woman, identified as Shobhana alias Vasanti, was arrested on Thursday for performing a tantric ritual in which children were forced to participate.
A video of a woman performing rituals with children sitting in front of her started doing the rounds online, prompting locals to protest outside her residence.
The accused woman was taken into custody by the police along with her friend Unnikrishnan.
Meanwhile, the Kerala Police has constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to conduct a detailed probe into the suspected ‘human sacrifice’ of two women in Pathanamthitta district. The team will be headed by Kochi city Deputy Commissioner (Law and Order) S Sasidharan and Perumbavoor ACP Anuj Paliwal as Chief Investigating Officer.
The three accused, husband and wife Bhagwal Singh and Laila and Mohammed Shafi were arrested on Tuesday.
The remains of two victims, identified as Padma and Roslyn, were exhumed from pits near Singh and Laila’s residence at Elanthur in Pathanamthitta district on October 11.
According to a police remand report filed before a court, the shocking “human sacrifice” was suspected to have been made as part of a ritual to gain financial gain.
Police said the accused allegedly lured the victims with the pretext of money and cut the bodies of the victims before burial.
On 26 September, Shafi contacted 52-year-old Padma, who used to sell lottery tickets in Kochi and lured her of Rs 15,000 for sex work, the police remand report reads.
She then agreed and accompanied Shafi to Bhagwal Singh and Laila’s house in Pathanamthitta district. There, the accused strangled her with a plastic rope to make her unconscious. After that, Shafi stabbed Padma with a knife. chopped off private parts. And slit his throat. After that, they cut him into 56 pieces and put the mutilated parts of the body in buckets and buried them in a pit,” the report elaborated. .
Police said they are investigating the possibility of cannibalism that the accused may have eaten the victims’ flesh.
Addressing a press conference, Kochi Police Commissioner CH Nagaraju told reporters that the main accused Shafi was a perverted person and had a criminal past.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)