Handled with discretion: Shaping policing practices through witch accusations

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Handled with discretion:

Shaping policing practices

through witch accusations

Helen M. Macdonald

The Indian state of Chhattisgarh has been continually confronted with violent assaults

and murder targeting individuals who are believed to practice witchcraft. By sketching

the murder of accused witch, Kulwantin Bai Nishad, in 1995, I highlight the way prevailing

assumptions about witchcraft, long held by the media, police and state, were contested.

Intersecting with a national and state discourse of modernist ideals, witch-related violence

has been transformed into a politicised object that signals extreme underdevelopment in

a state whose legitimacy depends upon progress and development. The Indian Police Service

(IPS), the foremost organisation to contend with these issues, maintains a crucial role in

administering the citizen–state encounter. Commonly associated with attributes of corrup-

tion, misuse of authority, violence and partisan politics, the police official emerged in the

findings as an ordinary citizen having a special and sometimes difficult public job. By

examining a discretionary ‘practice’ at work in police dealings with witchcraft accusations,

I argue that power shapes what is recognised as criminal behaviour, the significance as-

signed to a crime and therefore, practices of policing. This article concludes that discretion-

ary power opens up a terrain of unpredictability and ‘formlessness’ that lends hope for

citizen rights.

I

Handling ‘discretion’: Some introductory comments

In May 1995, Kulwantin Bai Nishad was murdered by a large group of

men from her village. An agitated mob came to her door one evening

and accused her of being responsible for a serious burn to a neighbour’s

Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.) 43, 2 (2009): 285–315

SAGE Publications Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore/Washington DC

DOI: 10.1177/006996670904300204

Helen M. Macdonald is at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cape

Town, South Africa. Email: [email protected],za




286 / HELEN M. MACDONALD

leg that had failed to heal after several months of treatment. Frightened

by the accusation of witchcraft, she ran to seek shelter. Instead of finding

protection, she was beaten for two hours, stripped naked and then as-

saulted for another two hours. Believing her to be dead and hoping to

conceal the murder, the attacking group tied a large stone to her body

and threw her into a well where she drowned. Preoccupation with witch

accusations in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh has a documented history

stretching from colonial times (Macdonald 2004). It comes as no surprise

that the Indian Police Service (IPS) has been the foremost organisation

required to contend with violent assaults and murder directed at indi-

viduals accused as witches. Kulwantin Bai’s murder was brutal, yet no

more so than other reported witch-killings. This article traces the ways

her murder heightened interest among the press, police hierarchy, pol-

iticians and state administration, thereby triggering a chain of events

that transformed witch-related violence into a politicised object that, at

times, lay outside of police control.

Few anthropologists conducting fieldwork in India have been able to

offer detailed accounts of witch accusations and the social dramas that

surround them, thereby accentuating the shortcomings of participant ob-

servation (Bailey 1997 and Carstairs 1983 are exceptions). Against this

background, I followed stories, thus most of my data relate to what people

said about the police and how the police dealt with witch-related violence,

thereby revealing their attitudes to, and moral evaluation of, the police.

Corruption, misuse of authority, violence and the criminalisation of pol-

itics were signatures commonly associated with the police. Open to the

possibility of the police as an obstacle to justice for women accused as

witches, I found myself confronted with evidence that challenged the

‘idea of the police’ pervasively held by nearly all I came into contact

with. With a single exception (outlined in detail later), women spoke

positively of their interactions with individual police officers and their

discharging of duties, thereby suggesting that witchcraft accusations

constitute a particular crime that reveals a distinct discretionary practice

at work. The police generally pledge to enforce all laws and to do so

without prejudice; however, full enforcement is both unreasonable and

impractical (Allen 1984; Fletcher 1984; Goldstein 1963; Kleinig 1996a,

1996b; Pepinsky 1984; Williams 1984). Selective law enforcement, on

the other hand, is problematic, and racism and sexism (communalism in

India), for example, often manifest themselves in police work, particularly



Shaping policing practices through witch accusations / 287


on the decision to arrest. The idea of discretion is perplexing and con-

fusion reigns in debates about the need for it and limits to it.

Some scholars emphasise the personal input of decision-makers; that

all decisions by police and judiciary are characteristically called discre-

tionary, restricts how we might understand them. Others naively think

of discretion as derived exclusively from the absence of ‘rules’.1 Kenneth

Culp Davis, one of the most prominent writers on discretion in law en-

forcement, has written that ‘a public officer has discretion whenever the

effective limits on his power leave him free to make a choice among

possible courses of action or inaction’ (Davis 1971: 4). Davis encourages

us to define discretion as the vacant area between policies and procedures,

thereby shifting the emphasis from normative to executive mechanisms

of control over decision making (Kleinig 1996b: 83).2 Fletcher (1984:

276), on the other hand, isolates four distinct usages for the concept of

‘discretion’: discretion as wisdom/discernment;3 discretion as managerial

authority (that is, the allocation of resources); discretion as personal input;

and discretion as power. He astutely points to the remarkable ease with

which one can ‘make a claim about discretion in one sense and then to

shift, quietly and perhaps unwittingly, to a parallel claim about discretion

in a totally distinct sense’ (ibid.: 279). For example, when one expresses

the hope (without guarantee) that the police ‘will exercise their discretion

with discretion’, discretion as sound judgment merges with the discre-

tionary power of decisional autonomy. When we treat the police official

as having full sovereignty over all of his/her choices, we simultaneously

represent a means of describing the personal input of the decision maker.

It is reasonable to say that we do not have a comprehensive theory of the

way in which people (whether they are citizens or legally capacitated)

make decisions under the law, and more work is needed to map decisional

trajectories.4

1 As Fletcher (1984) points out, controlling speed through speed limits does not keep

drivers from breaking the law.2 Whether Davis’s definition is workable or not, it has had an enormous impact on the

way research has been conducted.3 Kleinig (1996b: 82) suggests that discretion can be understood as discernment and

points to ‘one who manifests good, sound, careful and wise judgment in practical and,

particularly, interpersonal affairs’.4 There also exists a methodological bias in a majority of studies conducted on ‘dis-

cretion’. As long as discretion is inadequately defined and understood, observers of the





Largely absent from these theorisations is the understanding of the

police official (as a decision maker) as a subject who stands in a rela-

tionship of interpersonal communication, influence, censure, blame,

vindication and legitimation, ‘between’ the lines of social policy and the

administration of justice. Police power is drawn upon in circumstances

that are both complicated (or simplified) and pressing. It has embedded

constraints, implicit or explicit understandings about the range of choices

that are articulated by reference to institutional, political, moral and/or

administrative norms, that may at times be mutually sustaining, or in

tension. Harold Pepinsky’s (1984) study on police discretion suggests

that power shapes what is recognised as criminal behaviour, the signifi-

cance assigned to a crime and therefore, practices of policing. Through

constant negotiation and contestation with the public, politicians, pro-

secutors, judges and the state, a social milieu (that may differ locally,

regionally and nationally) is produced that determines discretionary au-

thority (Bayley 1977). With any shift in perception, accepted policing

practices are broken down, re-negotiated, contested and evaluated, often

resulting in new legislation or rule making.5

It is not only ‘discretion’ that is socially produced and reproduced,

so, too, is accountability. While the liberal post-colonial Indian state

presents its police as a neutral tool of law enforcement, it has generated

new discourses of accountability. In Chhattisgarh, witch accusations were

once confined to the realm of police discretion, in all four senses as per

Fletcher (1984). Now they are located in an enlarged and public sphere,

for the most part framed through a discourse of development, progress

and modernity. Such linkages have structuring effects that partially deter-

mine the contexts in which daily practices are carried out (Gupta 1995).

While discretionary power traverses the state administrative apparatus,

it becomes more relevant in the case of the police, particularly low-

level officials, where they maintain a crucial role in administering the

processes of arrest, prosecution and trial can describe any decision as discretionary, a

process that may not accurately reflect the decision-maker’s reality of decisions made in

the criminal process.5 Pepinsky (1984) points out that rules intending to limit discretion, paradoxically,

end in the creation of new appearances of discretion as the police readjust their definitions

of crime and expected policing behaviour.





citizen–state encounter. For individual policemen,6 witch accusations

reveal an uncomfortable negotiation between personal belief, moral obli-

gations, political/media scrutiny and the formal application of the law

that coincide to indicate the puzzling (and at times, disturbing) char-

acter of police power and discretion.

II

Notes from the field

Much of the discussion will concentrate on police involvement in public

accusations of jadu-tona (black magic or witchcraft)7 from Chhattisgarh,

a predominantly adivasi (tribal) state of central India.8 My entry into the

field coincided with celebrations marking the bifurcation of Chhattisgarh

state from Madhya Pradesh in November 2000. To address the dearth of

research conducted in non-adivasi areas, I restricted my fieldwork site

to the agricultural plain of Chhattisgarh, primarily Raipur, Dhamtari,

Mahasamund, Durg, Bilaspur and Rajnandgaon districts.9 A central part

of my research involved following witchcraft accusations beyond house-

holds and villages into broader spaces of engagement between villagers,

police, media, state and political actors. In total, records of sixty-three

witchcraft accusations (eighty-four persons accused as tonhi and tonha)10

6 The Chhattisgarh state policy for women has expressed desire to deploy women

police personnel in rural police stations where possible. See http://chhattisgarh.gov.in/

wcd/womenpolicy.pdf (accessed 2 February 2009). I did not encounter a single female

officer in the rural areas.7 Research findings indicate that over 90 per cent of public witchcraft accusations re-

sulted from the alleged witch ‘causing’ illness or death (Macdonald 2004).8 The adivasis constitute 32.5 per cent of the population of Chhattisgarh, compared

with 7.8 per cent for India (1991 census). See ‘Tribal Protests and Rebellions’, http://

chhattisgarh.gov.in/profile/corigin.htm#tribal (accessed 2 February 2009).9 The majority of research on contemporary witch-killings has been conducted in adivasi

areas, leaving a gap in the literature on upper-caste Hindu and Muslim communities (Ghosh

1999; Kelkar and Nathan 1991, 1993; Kishwar 1987; Mullick 2000a, 2000b; Nathan et al.

1998; Sundar 2001). A dated exception is Epstein (1959), who studied intra-caste witch

accusations among the Okkaligas, a dominant landowning and cultivating caste in the

multicaste population of southern Karnataka state, in south-western peninsular India.10 Although gender-specific words for male and female witches exist, the feminine

tonhi is generally used by Chhattisgarhis to reflect the widely held perception that witchcraft

is a feminine occupation. Of the cases examined, findings indicate that women were accused





dating from 1993 to 2001 were obtained—collated from newspapers,

court and police records and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

Informal interviews were conducted in approximately forty villages; in

some instances, up to four repeat visits were made. In addition, I spent

three months living in Ballabgarra village (name changed) following an

accusation of witchcraft against two women in 2000. I made nine visits

over the course of fifteen months to Ballabgarra. Follow-up research

was conducted in October 2004.

It was certainly not part of the original intention to study the phenom-

ena discussed here and data of consequence crossed my path incidentally

in the natural flow of fieldwork. Upon reflection, I came to acknowledge

that my relationship with the Chhattisgarh police has been a long and

sustained one, beginning in 1999, when I met with the then Raipur Super-

intendent of Police to substantiate whether Chhattisgarh was a suitable

field site for studying witch accusations. I was anxious to avoid associa-

tion with the police, an aim that failed for three reasons. First, my first

case investigation was arranged ten days after I arrived in Raipur city, and

without consultation, my contact and her journalist colleague stopped at

the local thana (police station) for case details, directions to the village

and, more importantly, a police escort. The combination of early fieldwork

days, language barriers and police civilian dress left me ignorant of my

surroundings and my Indian companions’ need for a police escort. Second,

investigating a phenomenon serious enough to involve assault and murder,

I was naturally cautious and uncertain of the response I would receive

from villagers. Friends played upon my and their own anxieties, and

I fell into a (fortunately short-lived) practice of asking for a police escort

to villages. Finally, and contrary to widely held assumptions and experi-

ences, the police officials I met were helpful, friendly and generous with

their hospitality and time. The sometimes-long waits in the thana were

accompanied by refreshments and tonhi gossip, where officers frequently

spoke of their personal experiences with jadu-tona (magic-witchcraft)

or simply offered their personal insights into witchcraft cases—all invalu-

able unsolicited ‘thick’ data for an anthropologist.

as witches 90 per cent of the time, and as a rule, they were publicly accused by men

(Macdonald 2004). I use the word tonhi in the same context, except where referring speci-

fically to a tonha (male witch).





First, some description for those readers unfamiliar with the Indian

police system. The system of policing bequeathed by the British in 1947,

despite the Indianisation of the police, has remained virtually intact since

the reforms of 1861. Governed by a single piece of national legislation,

one police force employs two recruitment practices, depending on the

level—Constable, Sub-Inspector, Deputy Superintendent of Police and

Assistant Superintendent of Police (Bayley 1983). The bulk of the police

force is recruited by individual states, whereby a hard-working constable

may be promoted to the highest eligible rank of Deputy Superintendent.

Senior-ranked officers (Deputy Superintendent and above) are recruited,

trained and appointed at the national level by the Government of India

through the All-India Services (AIS). Described by Bayley (1983: 485)

as the ‘elite of the Indian officer corps’, the IPS officers, along with their

other AIS counterparts (the Indian Administrative Service [IAS] and the

Indian Forest Service) may be deployed to serve anywhere in the country,

although they are assigned to specific state cadres (The Indian Police

Journal 1970). By stipulating that recruits from outside should fill half

of the number of IAS/IPS positions in each state, the AIS intention-

ally brought ‘a national perspective’ to the administration of a country

understood to be regionally, ethnically and religiously diverse (Raghavan

2003: 130).

III

Shifting perceptions:

The murder of Kulwantin Bai Nishad

The violence that accompanied Kulwantin Bai’s death was similar to

that of other reported ˜onhi-killings, yet her murder sparked a distinctive

reaction among the NGOs, the press, police and administration. First,

her murder came six weeks after a young man, believing 60-year-old

Suraj Bai11 to be a tonhi, strangled her and removed her eyes with a

pocket knife. Suraj Bai’s murder prompted a local journalist to write a

scathing half-page editorial condemning a series of tonhi-killings in his

area (Verma 1995). Although he clearly laid the blame for tonhi killings

at the feet of ‘exploitative village healers’, he was equally critical of the

11 Non-Muslim Chhattisgarhi women are addressed as ‘Bai’ (literally ‘woman’). Muslim

women are addressed as ‘Begum’.





police and administration, accusing them of taking the murder lightly,

of ignoring the role village healers play in witchcraft cases, and of lacking

‘deep insight’ and action in relation to tonhi killings.

The media outrage grew with a second murder, particularly after it

emerged from an autopsy that Kulwantin Bai had died from drowning.12

The media reported that the female sarpanch and several other panch

(members of the village council) asked the mob to stop beating Kulwantin

Bai, but they too were threatened. Ignoring requests to do something,

the kotwar (village guard who liaises with the police) returned to bed,

choosing instead to report Kulwantin Bai as a ‘missing person’ to the

police only the next morning. Put very simply in one newspaper article,

‘If the information about the incident was given to the police at night, it

could have been possible to save Kulwantin’. There was also considerable

media-provoked public sympathy for the victim’s burdened life and re-

cently orphaned children. Widowed after her husband’s prolonged illness,

Kulwantin Bai was left to raise two young children by working as a

daily wage agricultural labourer.13 According to the court transcript of

her daughter’s testimony, Kulwantin Bai opened the door to her neigh-

bours calling, ‘bauji, bauji (literally sister-in-law, brother’s wife)’.

Kulwantin Bai’s two children, aged seven and four, were restrained by

neighbours as they watched their mother being dragged from the house.

For the next month, their piercing eyes gazed out from the newspaper

stalls, their photographs demanding that the public not forget their plight.

This sustained media attack on the police and administration may well

have prompted action, but her death was significant for other reasons.

Kulwantin Bai’s murder reflected growing contestations of a powerful

historical narrative of Chhattisgarhi witchcraft that had previously con-

fined witch-killing largely to adivasi ‘culture’ and ‘belief’ (Macdonald

2004). Created by colonial boundary making, Skaria (1997) argues that

dichotomised transformations were made between the ‘tribal’/wild/witch-

killer and Hindu/less-wild/restrained peasant.14 Post-Independence police

12 A collection of articles was published by Deshbandhu—1, 2, 3 June and 7, 21 July

1995.13 Kulwantin Bai’s husband, paralysed down one-half of his body, had died several

years prior to her murder.14 The peoples of Chhattisgarh were singled out for their ‘belief’ in witchcraft very

early in the colonial texts (Macdonald 2004). Graphic descriptions of savage acts of witch





texts failed to challenge these prevailing notions and witch accusations

continued to be debated in terms of adivasi crime. For example, in a

small booklet entitled, Policing in Tribal Areas, Superintendent of Police

for Bastar, Mr Puran Batria, argued that ‘tribals have no sanctity for

human life’, and they ‘live and move in an atmosphere pregnant with

strange beliefs and superstitions’ (Batria 1968; see also, Ali 1973). The

idea of the ‘tribal criminal’, long held in the media, police and public

imagination, was challenged by Kulwantin Bai’s murder.15 Mannu Nishad,

the principal accused in the murder, did not fit the stereotype of a back-

ward, ignorant, poor and uneducated ‘tribal’ aggressor. He commuted

17 km to Raipur (the then administrative headquarters of the Chhattisgarh

Division) for his job with the Madhya Pradesh Housing Board. When

his 22-year-old son fell ill, Mannu was able to afford expensive medicine,

surgeries and several months of convalescence in a Raipur clinic. To

defend his case, Mannu hired Raipur’s most renowned defence lawyer.

Equally, Tarra village was not the stereotypical underdeveloped, interior

or isolated village in the adivasi tracts. Tarra is a large (approximate

population of 3,000) agricultural village of predominantly caste Hindu

peasants and lies a kilometre off a main road linking Raipur to Baloda

Bazaar.

There were a number of immediate responses to Kulwantin Bai’s mur-

der, all closely charted in the press. Dr Dinesh Mishra, the founder and

president of the NGO Andh Shraddha Nirmulan Samiti or Blind Faith

Eradication Committee, wrote in his inaugural report (1995) that the

murder of Kulwantin as a tonhi facilitated ‘the first effort to create aware-

ness in Chhattisgarh against superstition,’ and added that it ‘opened the

minds of people and police, and brought them to a single stage to search

for a solution’. In gestures to win the confidence, respect and cooperation

of the public, the police held workshops to implement changes and seek

recommendations for future policy. Within a month of Kulwantin Bai’s

murder, the police and administration jointly organised a seminar on

murder reinforced colonial perceptions of a backward and wild adivasi population, in

need of strong governance and protection from their own vices.15 This does not suggest that the dichotomy between tribe and caste no longer exists.

My findings suggest that despite abandoning derogatory terms post-Independence, a dis-

tinction between the ‘backward’ and the ‘civilised’ still lies deeply entrenched in the per-

ceptions of Indian nationalist leaders and elites (Macdonald 2004).





‘Tonhi and Other Superstitions’, and over 200 village kotwars attended.

The media reports read like a list of ‘who’s who’ among the local elite,

as district administrators, politicians, lawyers, social activists, journalists

and the police put forward a number of theories for witch-killing. A joint

press release by the Collector and Superintendent of Police (Raipur Dis-

trict) announced an action plan of conducting workshops and general

meetings with elected representatives and government agencies. Slogans,

posters, songs and street plays were to be used ‘to create public awareness’

and ‘training’ was to be imparted to government officials and all non-

governmental social organisation representatives.

Villagers from Tarra assured me the case was so important that it

‘went all the way to Central Government in Delhi’. With certainty, the

state government demanded further information and the Inspector General

(Raipur Division) responded by visiting Tarra village immediately after

the murder. His comprehensive report entitled, Report Concerning the

Murder of Women for Black Magic and Other Such Incidents in the

Chhattisgarh Region, was circulated to all police superintendents. Con-

tained in the report were three years (1993–95) of statistics for witch-

related murder, a sophisticated analysis of the ‘tonhi problem’ (lack of

health facilities, lack of scientific and medicinal knowledge, exploitation

by village healers, land acquisition by influential persons, revenge and

retaliation for rejected sexual advances) and a list of possible solutions.

Orders came directly from police headquarters in Bhopal and the message

was clear: any matter concerning tonhi, from rumour to murder, was

serious. The covering letter elucidated: ‘The Director General of Police

desires that you should go through the note and take necessary action as

suggested in it so that this abominable practice [violence against women]

is abolished in the affected areas of your district’. I paraphrase pertinent

sections of police policy and procedure at length, as it becomes clear

that ‘discretion’ in all four senses was simultaneously limited and pro-

moted (Fletcher 1984).16

16 Positioned within different systems of power, state officials simultaneously are subject

to, and utilise, quite varying patterns of accountability (Gupta 1995). In contrast to account-

ability directed at the police, the administration’s responsibilities were more generalised:

improved health services and education, formation of local anti-superstition committees,

liaising with local organisations, special courts and rehabilitation/security for accused

women.





� Create a watch list of all practising village healers. If found admin-

istering treatment for ‘serious’ ailments, they can be charged under

law.

� Reward village officials (that is, kotwar, panch and sarpanch) for

timely information. If village officials are involved or fail to report

a tonhi case, conspiracy charges can be filed against them.17

� Any tonhi case is assumed to be serious and requires an immediate

on-site evaluation. During patrol, all rumours regarding tonhi to

be investigated immediately and, on return to the station, recorded

in the daily diary.

� Vacillation or failure to take action after a report is filed will result

in official sanction against the police official.

� Police officials should use village visits to create awareness.

� Evidence should be gathered to ensure an early dispensation of

justice.

Not only responsible for the murder investigation of Kulwantin Bai,

the police were directed to engage the criminal and legal process in multi-

dimensional ways that are in effect today. The police, whose power, duties

and functions are circumscribed by state and national constitutions, exer-

cised their ‘prerogative’ within the bounds of those constitutions to de-

velop departmental codes and guidelines.18 However, police forces are

not sovereign institutions, free-standing and autonomous (Bayley 1977;

Pepinsky 1984). They reflect the social milieu in which they operate.

Can we dismiss Kulwantin Bai’s murder as a flash of interest that

temporarily assumed some political import? In the past, witch-killings

17 A ‘punishment and reward’ system for kotwars was designed to pre-empt violence

and murder. Kotwars who informed the police early of witch accusations could receive a

monetary reward; for those who failed to do so, the outcome was strict departmental

action and employment termination. Three weeks after the police-organised workshop,

another woman was tortured. The police arrested six people, including the village healer,

and made a cash award of Rs 1,000 to the kotwar for his ‘timely’ report to the police.

(‘Teacher’s family arrested for harassment in the name of witchcraft,’ Deshbandhu,

22 July 1995)18 It is more appropriate to describe their actions as matters of prerogative than dis-

cretion. According to Fletcher (1984), these decisions are free choices in a way in that

discretionary decisions are not. However, it is one thing to say that matters should be left

to police discretion and it is another to say that they ought to be left to individual police

officers’ discretion.





had evoked little attention from the media, politicians, administrators

and intellectuals. The media coverage of Kulwantin Bai was a notable

exception to the disconnected and intermittent atrocity stories reported

in the past.19 Responses to her murder mark the birth of a decade-long

campaign against violence on women accused as witches. For the police,

tonhi accusations were transformed from crimes dealt with exclusively

by them into politicised and public objects that challenge ideas of develop-

ment, progress and modernity that, at times, lay outside their control.

IV

The civilising mission of modernity

Gupta (1995: 385) argues that newspapers constitute ‘a major discursive

form through which daily life is narrativized and collectivities im-

agined’.20 A feature of newspaper accounts of brutal witch murders and

supernatural happenings was their emphasis on, and construction of, par-

ticular ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ subjects. Some reinforced old colonial

ideas of wild tribals, and others, that credulous villagers were obstructing

modernity and societal progress. The most stable narrative was that of

villagers clinging to their deep-rooted superstitions and choosing explo-

itative quacks over ‘modern medicine’. Witchcraft and witch accusations

were positioned as outmoded and in need of being replaced with a pro-

gressive, secular and scientific outlook. For example, in late November

2001, invited members of the public submitted editorials in a weeklong

campaign run by the newspaper, Deshbandhu, on superstition and tonhi.

One contributor suggested that ‘when the nation boasts of scientific pro-

gress and human rights protection, some remote corners of the country

19 Not only was there extended coverage of Kulwantin Bai’s murder, several editorials

also were published. In July 1995, Pulis Parikrama (Police Circular) published a well-

researched six-page article by Asif Iqbal and Govind Sharma, entitled ‘Tonhi Hatyakand’

(Witch Murder), which was inspired by Kulwantin Bai’s case.20 Witchcraft cases, editorial opinion, public opinion polls, awareness campaigns and

expert knowledge were confined to Hindi medium newspapers. The importance of verna-

cular newspapers lies in the fact that they carry special sections devoted to local news. In

contrast, editors of English newspapers tended to publish tonhi cases only when judges

imposed heavy sentences on the perpetrator or the administration took some interest in a

case. Of twenty-four articles printed on tonhi cases during the year 2001, only five came

from English newspapers.





cannot come out of this medieval way of thinking’. Another stated that

‘to believe in witchcraft and sorcery in this age of science and information

is ridiculous’. Underwriting these statements were several assumptions:

first, that there was an inevitable, linear progression towards nationhood

and modernity (Pandey 1995); second, that this progression of the nation

was being hindered in specific ways; and third, that ideas of the modern

generated a sense of difference, by marking the identities of those persons

who were modern as different from and opposed to those who were trad-

itional (Pigg 1996).

A common discursive practice was to talk of society as ‘modern’,

‘civilised’ and in the ‘21st century’—or not. This suggests that belief in

witchcraft should be outdated because of progress made in the fields of

science, education, medicine, women’s empowerment and human rights.

Taken to represent ‘tradition’, village healers and credulous villagers

have been and continue to be usable symbols in the construction of mod-

ernity. In the colonising discourse of the modern rationalist, the word

‘traditional’ signals an objectified world of shared and unquestioned

beliefs, a kind of collective mental prison in which villagers are trapped.

Differences among villagers were glossed over or ignored completely.21

Equally, a lack of belief in witchcraft did not mean an absence of ‘super-

stition’ per se among educated urbanites, who readily accept that Sai Baba

produces ash from his hands or seek out Vedic astrologers for auspicious

days to conduct business. Their choices of other forms of superstition

were simply not treated as backward in the same way. A modern person

used ‘modern medicine’ or consulted a ritual specialist with a ‘higher

knowledge’ who performs a ‘social service to the people’ (Macdonald

2004). When modern persons fell prey to cheats/frauds, they were pos-

itioned as victims of modernity itself, that is, they were greedy, not super-

stitious. These notions appear plausible only from the contemporary point

of view.

I foreground the newspapers’ construction of modern/traditional sub-

jects to draw attention to the intersection with competing national and

regional discourses of development, progress and modernity. Liberated

from colonialism, the Indian state that came into being in 1947 was com-

mitted to a programme of modernisation. For Chhattisgarh, this translated

21 For the majority of rural Chhattisgarhis, a sceptical belief in tonhi, healing and

healers allowed multiple meanings of witchcraft to exist (Macdonald 2004).





into the public sector giant Bhilai Steel Plant, a number of large cement

plants, steel-rolling and re-rolling mills, a series of dams on the upper

Mahanadi River and electric power supply from the National Thermal

Power Corporation (NTPC) units at Korba. Despite large projects,

Chhattisgarh’s development was perceived to have remained peripheral

and plagued by a lack of will, neglect and indifference from the un-

bifurcated Madhya Pradesh government. The Chhattisgarh government

website notes: ‘Chhattisgarh, primarily due to its large tribal population,

has historically not been a part of the mainstream and has therefore re-

mained underdeveloped. Critical indicators for education and health

have remained low’.22 Further, in the struggle for secession, ‘a sense of

relative deprivation had...developed in the region and people felt that a

separate state was imperative for development to take place’.23 Despite

its flaws, the discourse that correlates secession to overcoming regional

inequalities has been used successfully in the call for state bifurcation in

India (McHenry 2004). Within this broad ‘civilising mission of modern-

ity’ discourse, specific social problems (such as tribal underdevelopment,

starvation deaths, mass migration, drought relief, etc., as well as witch

accusations) are viewed in opposition to modern goals.

I draw attention to the final feature of the newspaper’s function. Media

reports created both subjects who were represented as exploited, power-

less and outraged, and a ‘public’ that demanded state institutions be ac-

countable to them. Over the course of a decade beginning in May 1995

with Kulwantin Bai’s death, those privileged to speak on her murder and

witchcraft killings in general, created a clear discourse of accountability.

Notably, there has been increased political involvement/interference in

tonhi cases. Politicians from across the political spectrum derived short-

term political mileage by focusing their attention on witch accusations—

‘solving problems and taking the credit’ (see Wade 1982). I was often in-

formed, ‘off the record’ by police officers that there were ‘politics behind’

cases I was researching. Some went ‘right to the top of national politics’.

Sensitive to political pressure, and feeling ‘very cautious’, investigating

22 See ‘Seeds of Protest and Change’, http://chhattisgarh.gov.in/profile/corigin.htm#

seed (accessed 2 February 2009).23 See ‘Creation of Chhattisgarh’, http://chhattisgarh.gov.in/profile/corigin.htm#

creation (accessed 2 February 2009).





officers were occasionally given ‘advice’ or ‘received instructions on

how to investigate cases’.24

The NGO, Blind Faith Eradication Committee, continued to grow as

its President, Dr Mishra, published his book, Parakh (Examination), in

1999, exposing fraudulent tricks, and he and his team members worked

to raise awareness through media campaigns and workshops in rural

villages (see Macdonald 2004). In August 2001, he raised the issue of

witch accusations with the touring Chairman of the National Human

Rights Commission (NHRC), Justice J.S. Verma. In November 2001, a

seven-member team formed by the Communist Party of India and

the All India Women’s Committee investigated a tonhi accusation. The

Chhattisgarh women’s organisation, Mahila Jagrati Sangathan, became

involved, asked three victims to speak to a large gathering of women

from ten neighbouring villages and arranged for the events to be broadcast

on national television (Sail 2002). In the same case, the tahsildar (rev-

enue official) distributed Rs 5,000 to each of the victims on behalf of the

Chhattisgarh government. These examples involved a number of ‘first

times’: compensation to a victim, team investigations, rehabilitation of

an accused woman. Pressure grew slowly, creating a groundswell at the

turn of the century and culminating, in early 2004, with the joint efforts

of varied individuals and organisations to address the issue at a legislative

level (Macdonald 2004). Dr Sudha Malaiya, a member of the National

Commission of Women (Government of India), lent her support to the

first sustained call for a Chhattisgarhi state law, making tonhi accusations

illegal.25 Impetus for a new law continued and in November 2004, a

Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed in the Chhattisgarh High Court

by an NGO, petitioning legislation to ban the practice of witch hunting.

24 Wade (1982) describes the transfer as the politician’s ‘basic weapon of control over

the bureaucracy’, thereby exercising considerable control over the careers and lives of

AIS officers. Politicians cannot influence who is promoted from one rank to another, but

can certainly influence postings, as there is no administrative law prohibiting the practice

of shifting officials at frequent intervals (Raghavan 2003). This said, I was not aware of

any witchcraft cases that were occasions for transfer.25 The state of Bihar was the first to pass a law in an attempt to curb witchcraft-related

violence. The NGO, Free Legal Aid Committee, spearheaded the campaign by first pro-

posing the Identification of Witch (Prevention) Act in 1995, which served as a guideline

for the Witchcraft Prohibition Act 1999.





Responding to public pressure and court directives, the Chhattisgarh gov-

ernment passed the Witchcraft Atrocities (Prevention) Act on 18 July

2005.26

Juxtaposed with circulating discourses of modernity, Kulwantin Bai’s

murder provided an impetus for media, politicians and state administration

to influence (intentionally or otherwise) the general level and vigour of

enforcement that should be applied in cases of witch-related violence.

The resulting alterations to police policy on tonhi accusations aimed to

strengthen police accountability by limiting police discretion and normal-

ising police procedure, while also enhancing efficiency in the prevention

of crime. With this in mind, what happens to a woman accused of witch-

craft when she moves from seeking help at the social level of kinship

and community to that of the police?

V

Encounters with the police

When one asks generally about policing practices in Chhattisgarh, one

is met head on with stories of corruption, misuse of authority, violence

by the police and the criminalisation of politics.27 From the way people

talk, it seems impossible even to have a complaint investigated, a case

registered, serve as an eyewitness free from verbal and physical intimida-

tion or for the police to act without financial incentive. Considering the

negative reputation of the police, I expected the worst from them, and

indeed, I had been unnerved by two encounters with police surveillance

of my activities.28 Towards the end of an interview, I would frequently

ask informants about police responses to their case. Some questions were

26 The campaign itself was limited in scope, and did not address the power balance

between men and women, women’s economic rights within the family and their status in

society (see Agnes 1997). The new law focused more on stringent punishment than pro-

cedural loopholes and obstacles to the judicial process.27 Both Gupta (1995) and Parry (2000) comment on the ‘unexceptionability’ of this

pervasive corruption discourse and the paucity of analysis on it.28 I was in the office of the Madhya Pradesh Department of Archaeology, Archives

and Museums seeking approval to use the regional archives, when the Deputy Director

received a phone call from the police making enquiries about me. I had arrived in Bhopal

the previous night and only the taxi driver could have known my precise location. On a

separate occasion, the police made a midnight call to my hotel room and attempted to

secure my passport for ‘safe-keeping’.





extremely leading: for example, Did the police beat you? Did the police

ask for bribes? I was open to the idea of exposing policing practices as a

barrier to justice; instead, I found something altogether different. Although

the occasional media article inferred police neglect to file witchcraft-

related cases, my findings indicated that the police recorded and filed

statements, made prompt arrests, implemented preventative measures,

located medical care for the injured, expressed empathy and offered

advice.29 It is necessary to highlight that my findings are limited to the

Raipur Range and Durg District police only.30

With a single exception, the police were described as having performed

their duty to those accused of witchcraft beyond my, and I argue popular,

expectations. Many women reported that the police were ‘good’, ‘help-

ful’, ‘supportive’ and that they were ‘treated well’. Where injuries were

sustained, the police sought medical treatment on their behalf. One officer

described the ‘awareness programme’ he created and conducted in the

villages: ‘When we go to the village we shout for any tonhi to harm us,

to do their jadu-tona on us’, implying that villagers will be persuaded

that tonhi do not exist when police officials come to no harm. Radha Bai

related how one evening a large group of men came with sticks from a

neighbouring village, accused her of witchcraft, beat her and threatened

to kill her unless she healed her friend’s illness:

I was horrified about what might happen. Again they will come and

do this. They were beating anyone who supported me. They were

beating the whole village. No one was listening to us. They were not

29 A local newspaper reported how Devki Bai handed a ‘memorandum’ to the Super-

intendent of Police and the District Collector of Mahasamund District complaining of

harassment by an Assistant Sub-Inspector when she attempted to file a complaint

(Deshbandhu, 21 May 1996). The police file indicates that the police arrested both parties

in what was described as a ‘bitter quarrel between two families’, suggesting that although

the police took action, Devki Bai’s experience with one officer in particular was

‘harassment’.30 Nandini Sundar’s research from the Bastar district indicated that the police had

taken action (personal correspondence; see also, Sundar 2001). However, a detailed report

collated by an NGO in Surguja District paints a very different picture, where ‘the action

that should be taken by law enforcing agencies is grossly inadequate and partial in some

cases’. Report on Tonhi and Dayan Practices prepared by Manav Sansadhan Sanskriti

Vikas Parishad for the National Commission for Women workshop (10 July 2004),

Ambikapur, Chhattisgarh.





listening to the kotwar either, so I sent my son to the thana. I don’t

know the name of the officer sahib from the thana, but he told my son

to bring some evidence, the kotwar and me. He asked what my caste

was. He said that he also was a Kewat and he treated me like a daughter.

He supported me very well.

In fact, Radha Bai’s experience with the police was so positive that when

I asked if she was still fearful of how others were treating her, she replied

vehemently, ‘The villagers are fine with me and if they are not, then

I will go and sit in the thana if anyone misbehaves with me. Before

I used to fear them, now I fear no one.’

During an interview, Jamila Begum praised the way police dealt with

her neighbour’s sons who had accused her of ‘placing mashan on their

house’ (making it a graveyard) and had thrown stones at her house. The

police, she said, were ‘good and helped me a lot’. She was advised by

the police and neighbours to ‘forgive’ her accusing neighbours as her

relationship with them had been positive to date, and that to go through

the criminal justice system would involve a long drawn-out process.31

Should her neighbours repeat the infraction, the police assured her, they

would file formal charges. This risks becoming a normative practice such

as that evidenced by police treatment of domestic violence, that is, the

police will threaten the husband and counsel the wife to adjust and forgive

(see Agnes 1997; Kelkar 1987). Jamila Begum was strong and forceful

31 Police efficiency does not necessarily equate to efficacy in a wider sense of social

justice for persons accused as witches. Unfortunately, I have little information on the out-

come of criminal proceedings. The courts remain untouched by information technology

and my efforts to track several cases proved largely fruitless (Macdonald 2004). Take

Kulwantin Bai’s case for example. Of the twenty-six people who were arrested under a

variety of charges for her murder in May 1995, the court dismissed eight witnesses and

the kotwar after ruling they had turned ‘hostile’ and only the combined depositions of the

sarpanch, Kulwantin Bai’s daughter and one other witness ‘could be relied upon’. In August

1999, four of the twenty-six accused were found guilty of murder and sentenced to life

imprisonment. They appealed to the High Court immediately. A month later, on 6 September

1999, their application to the High Court was allowed, the four accused were released on

bail for a personal bond of Rs 10,000 and directed to appear before the court on 24 July

2001. As of May 2001 (6 years after the murder), the main accused is out on bail, living in

the village, having served a total of 18 months in jail. The outcome remains unknown.

Can a judgment delivered three to five years after the crime, with an option of appealing,

ever give justice to women?





when I met her, and dismissed the incident as having little impact on her

life. She recounted how after meeting with the police to file her complaint,

she publicly confronted her neighbours in an open square. In Jamila’s

case, the police arrested the neighbours by invoking section 151 of the

Criminal Code of Procedure (CrPC), known as the prohibitory sections

that allow the police to arrest any person for a period of up to twenty-

four hours, without a warrant, if they possess knowledge that a crime is

about to be committed and there is no other way to prevent the crime.

Asked to report to the station early the next morning, the young brothers

were presented to the Sub-District Magistrate’s court the following day.

The brothers attended five hearings in front of the Sub-District Magistrate,

before paying a substantial bribe to a court clerk to ‘make the case dis-

appear’ and absconded. An exception to my overall findings, Binda Bai’s

experiences with the local police were anything but positive: ‘They

wouldn’t give me a report and laughed at me. They said I was pagali

(mad). I went to the city police, because the local thana takes money.

You have to pay something otherwise the thana is useless’. But, even

members of the subaltern classes have practical knowledge of and employ

the multiple levels of state authority to their advantage. Binda Bai handed

a ‘memorandum’ to the Superintendent of Police, District Collector and

claimed to have taken her matter to a ‘Minister’.32

In contrast to the recently passed Chhattisgarh Witchcraft Atrocities

(Prevention) Act (2005), women accused as tonhi (or the police acting

on their behalf) previously constructed their legal opportunities out of

existing laws.33 Agnes (1997) and Solanki (2001) provide strong evidence

to show that definitions of violence against women institutionalised in

the legal discourse are too narrow and, at times, work against the interests

32 The Durg District Collector responded to Binda Bai’s plight by requesting the Durg

Zila Saksharta Samiti (Literacy Mission, a government funded NGO, whose mandate is

much wider than literacy) to investigate. A group of activists met with the panchayat,

took statements from villagers and appointed a three-member committee to ensure Binda

Bai’s well-being.33 The prevailing law on crime prevention and punishment is embodied in two principal

statutes: the Indian Penal Code (IPC) of 1862 and the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC)

of 1973. Based on British criminal law, the IPC defines basic crimes and punishments.

The machinery for prevention and punishment through the criminal court system rests

with the CrPC, which includes provisions to expedite the judicial process, increase effi-

ciency, prevent abuses and provide legal relief to the poor.





of women. Despite these limitations, when confronted with tonhi accusa-

tions, the police adopted a wide-ranging set of legal avenues in which to

register a case. Of the sixty-three cases investigated, fifty-six were for-

mally registered with the police. From this subgroup, a total of 31 sections

of the IPC and three sections of the CrPC were utilised. For any one

case, police employed between one and ten IPC sections (an average of

3.3 sections).34

Until the Chhattisgarh Witchcraft Atrocities (Prevention) Act (2005)

was passed, it was not theoretically possible to prosecute a person for

simply calling someone a witch. However, the police more often than

not ‘interpreted’ the word tonhi as an obscenity, thereby allowing charges

to be filed under Section 294 (‘obscene acts and songs’), which inci-

dentally, was the most utilised section of the IPC of the fifty-six registered

cases examined.35 The complainant typically stated that her accusers used

gali (swear words), sometimes prefixed by the words gandi-gandi

(obscene) and called her a tonhi. Section 294 could be applied where

physical violence was absent from the accusation or to a wider group of

accomplices whose participation did not directly involve in physical

violence. Use of prohibitory sections of the CrPC, that is, Sections 107/

151 and 116(3), which allow the police to arrest and lay charges for an

offence not yet committed, has been increasing steadily. In twelve cases,

arrests were made under these sections; nine in the years 2000 and 2001.

In practice, these sections were frequently used when the accused woman

refused to register a case or the police believed there was insufficient

physical evidence to secure a conviction. One officer likened Section

151 to ‘ram ban’, a direct reference to Lord Ram’s mythological arrow,

the ultimate weapon with which to prevent crime. Application of these

sections was intended to scare and serve as a warning to the accusers by

bringing them into direct confrontation with the legal apparatus (overnight

in a police cell, appearance before the Sub-District Magistrate and in all

34 The police focus on names of people, the implements they used, their acts of aggres-

sion and the complainant’s resulting injuries. A list of accusers constitutes ‘several per-

sons with common intention’ (Section 34) or an ‘unlawful assembly/rioting’ (Sections

141–149). Injury indicates ‘voluntary causing of hurt’ (Sections 319–335) and threat

denotes ‘criminal intimidation’ (Sections 506, 506B).35 I have deliberately elected to use the word ‘interpreted’ (‘used judgment’ or ‘personal

understanding’) instead of ‘exercised discretion’ to stress the input of the individual police

officer who mould and apply the law to a set of facts.





probability, police intimidation). A local administrator who explained

his use of Sections 107/151 to me reiterated this view:

We apply Section 151, and take the statement that had they not been

arrested immediately there would have been some danger. Under

Section 107, we take some action. We take Rs 5000 to Rs 10,000 as a

bond for six months or one year, and a written statement from them

that, ‘If you violate the law in any way your bond will be forfeited

and you will be arrested’. The fear of jail comes in their heart so that

they will not do these things again. Those who fear the law and jail

correct themselves.

Eager to avoid suggestions of negligence, corruption and abuse, the

police appeared anxious about seeking medical care for victims, the time-

liness of reporting and subsequent police procedure, and duly documented

these concerns in the First Information Report (FIR).36 Complainants

stated that they ‘came immediately’ to report the crime or provided rea-

sons for delays, for example, ‘due to fear’. Threats of harm pertaining to

police involvement were noted down, as in the case of Radha Bai, who

reported that ‘they threatened to finish off my family or bury us in the

ground if the matter was reported to the police’.

The same chain of command that subordinates the non-ranked officer

to his superior appears to prevail over ‘belief’ in tonhi and jadu-tona.

Findings indicated that senior-ranked police officers were better educated,

often English-speaking, typically non-local, and were notably disinter-

ested in and lacked a fear of witchcraft, possibly reflecting the ‘national

perspective’ actively promoted by the central government. Many officers

were quick to tell me that they had never encountered this tonhi problem

until transferred to their Chhattisgarh postings. I received numerous

testimonies to the fallacy of village belief in witchcraft and even an offer

to sneak around graveyards at midnight (looking for tonhi) in civilian

clothing with a District Superintendent of Police. One officer put forward

the argument that ‘if tonhi really existed, then we would send them to

36 Every investigation of a cognisable offence (an offence that may be judicially in-

vestigated) commences with the recording of the FIR, which forms the foundation of an

investigation and is used as evidence at the time of trial (Government of Madhya Pradesh,

Police Department 1967).





the border to do jadu-tona’, implying that the skills of a witch could be

put to use against the enemy. However, entering a rural police station, an

accused woman is most likely to come into contact with a junior-ranked

male officer possessing the following features: local, with minimal edu-

cation, Hindi and Chhattisgarhi speaking, who believes more or less in

tonhi and jadu-tona, although younger recruits lean towards scepticism

of the supernatural world (Macdonald 2004).37 Internal mechanisms such

as chain of command and administrative rule-making ensure that discre-

tion in witchcraft cases is largely reduced as individual officers generally

adhere to normative practices. In fact, an existing ethos and consensus

may in some cases make arrest so desirable that, for all practical purposes,

the officer has no discretion: he is giving effect to a more general depart-

mental or societal will. One officer complained that,

If the word ‘tonhi’ is mentioned in a police case, then the police have

to investigate immediately for precautionary measures. People know

this and so they exploit it. For example, if two women have been

fighting, one of them will say the other called her a tonhi to get police

attention for their case.

Articulated here is a sense of powerlessness at the lack of police dis-

cretion. What could be classified as fisticuffs among neighbours that the

police might ordinarily order the complainants to resolve themselves

and not waste police resources is shunted to priority investigation with

the expectation of ‘full enforcement’ by the mere mention of the word

tonhi.38

‘Obedience’ has been studied in social psychology mainly in terms

of its harmful features (from the experiences of Nazi Germany to

Milgram’s laboratory), whereby, ‘under orders from an authority, it ap-

pears that many normal people respond with obedience, despite their

37 In an enlightening encounter, an older constable disobeyed a direct order from his

superior to escort me to a village, stating ‘I am terrified of the tonhi in that village’. With

fear etched into his face, the older constable fled the thana, all the while shouting his

reasons for refusal. Instead, a new recruit in his early twenties accompanied us. Asked

why he was unafraid, the young recruit replied, ‘Because I have never seen a tonhi with

my own eyes, I am not so sure about them’.38 A policy of ‘full enforcement’ implies that the police are required and expected to

enforce all criminal statutes at all times against all offenders (Goldstein 1963).





own scruples and discomfort about actions that they and others would

usually regard as illegal, immoral, and even unthinkable’ (Kelman and

Hamilton 1989: 23). Passini and Morselli (2009) argue that obedience

(and disobedience) has both constructive and destructive features. Ac-

cording to Kelman and Hamilton (1989), legitimacy is processed at three

different levels: (i) the legitimacy of the system where the authority rela-

tionship is located; (ii) the legitimacy of the authority itself; and (iii) the

legitimacy of the demands that the authority makes of its group members.

They further suggest that evaluating the legitimacy of the ‘demands’

rather than the legitimacy of the authority is sometimes more appropriate,

as would be the case of police subordinates, who are unlikely to question

the legitimacy of the police force (or the system which reproduces it) on

the grounds of principles of justice and equity whose authority stems

from the state. Thus, a ‘superstitious’ policeman ‘voluntarily’ acquiesces

to demands and regulates his behaviour when he perceives the authority

as being legitimate. As a form of social influence, the authority exerted

in witchcraft cases could be argued to be constructive, or what Kelman

and Hamilton (1989) call ‘legitimate influence’. This also provides an

explanatory framework for why we cannot assume police discretion

is grounded in the same considerations for all locales or for all crimes

(Kleinig 1996b).

VI

Public signatures of the police:

Actual policing practices

The police were never a focus for research, and only gradually did it be-

come evident that a ‘practice’ was at work in witchcraft accusations,

which in all likelihood had an important impact on how the police/citizen-

ship encounter was being experienced. In truth, I have little evidence to

show that in the context of all crime, the rate of investigations and arrests

for witch-related violence are any different from other crimes of a similar

nature. It would be tempting to discard these positive experiences as

anomalies, or somehow simply incorrect, that there is nothing special

or singular about witch accusations either as a crime or in terms of po-

lice response. In doing so, one could conclude that popular discourse is

prone to inflate the negative where the police are involved, that what we





are dealing with is a perception of the police that does not coincide with

actual practice.39 Equally, it could well be that suggesting there is a ‘prac-

tice at work’ gives the impression of greater regularity and less variation

than is in fact the case, and there is no way to deal with this problem

except with more research. Nevertheless, extended residence and con-

sistent enquiry on both sides of the police–complainant transaction, and

several other studies provide evidence which, although fragmentary, is

consistent with the argument to be made here: that the public signatures

of the police—corruption, misuse of authority and violence—rarely ac-

company witchcraft-related investigations.40

Justice A.N. Mulla of the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court,

whilst giving judgment in State v. Mohammad Naim, bluntly declared:

‘There is no single lawless group in the whole country whose record of

crimes comes anywhere near the record of that single organized unit,

which is known as the Indian Police Force’ (cited in Monteiro 1978: 225).41

Hansen (2001: 244), whose research has examined the bloody riots be-

tween Hindus and Muslims in Mumbai in December 1992 and January

1993, argues: ‘that for young Muslims in [Muslim] areas, the police force

was an ever present and dreaded representation of a hostile state’. During

a week of rioting, murder and arson, the police actively assisted Hindus

by overlooking their activities or by providing them protection from

Muslim counterattacks. The anti-Muslim bias of the police force became

more obvious when officers issued orders of ‘shoot to kill’ at Muslim

demonstrators. Reports relating to the communalisation of the police

abound.42 In addition, the depositions before the inquiry commission (set

up in June 1993) exposed some of the many links between the police

39 In fact, the few times I have attempted to disseminate my findings to Indian audiences,

I have been met with disbelief and the suggestion that, as a foreigner, I have more than

likely been duped in some way.40 Very little rich ethnographic evidence documents what lower level officials actually

do (Gupta 1995; Wade 1982).41 A similar comment was made in the Pakistan probe into police corruption: ‘the

police... are alleged to be the single largest source of corruption and abuse of official au-

thority in the country’ (cited in Chattha and Ivkovic 2004: 175).42 Raghavan (2003) points out that the principal findings from previous Commissions

of Inquiry for Hindu–Muslim riots (Gujarat, 1969; Bihar, 1979) indicate the police were

partisan in favour of the majority (i.e., Hindu) community. Raghavan argues that there

was sufficient evidence from private bodies to suggest, at the very least, a ‘lackadaisical

approach’ by the police to the violence against Muslims in the Gujarat riots in 2002.





force and local political organisations, particularly the militant Hindu

nationalist organisation, Shiv Sena. According to Bayley’s close study

of the Indian police over twenty years, they ‘have become deeply involved

in partisan politics: they are preoccupied with it, penetrated by it, and

now participate individually and collectively in it’ (1983: 484; see also,

Sharma 2002). His views are supported by retired IPS officer Raghavan,

who makes a strong argument that as long as the current political system

continues to cultivate police identification with the ruling political party,

nothing will improve and ‘the police will continue to be assailed for act-

ing as the handmaiden of politicians’ (Raghavan 2003: 133).

There is evidence from the police themselves to show that police pro-

fessionalism has been compromised by corruption, human rights abuses

and misuse of authority, all of which is compounded by a political system

that fosters police identification with the ruling political party (Gautam

1984; Monteiro 1978; Raghavan 2003; Sharma 2002). Drawing on per-

sonal experiences and high profile examples from the media, Raghavan

identifies the relationship of the police with the ruling political party, a

decline in police neutrality and lack of personal integrity as the most

harmful factors that contribute ‘to bring ignominy to the whole force

and to erode public confidence’ (2003: 122). Sharma (2002) corroborates

his findings of significant police corruption in twelve districts of a north-

western region of India by drawing on police commission reports for

Punjab, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states. Research conducted by

the Anti-Corruption Bureau of the Delhi Police revealed that the police

failed to register a significant number of the crime cases (Monteiro 1978).

Posing as complainants, officials went to thirty-six police stations, where

only ten cases from thirty-two (31 per cent) that were sought to be regis-

tered were actually registered. The Madhya Pradesh Police Commission

of 1965–66 found informants complained about lengthy waits in police

stations and that FIRs were not recorded at the time the complaint was

made (Government of Madhya Pradesh, Police Department 1967).

Further, Dhareshwar and Srivatsan’s (1996) research on ‘rowdy sheeters’ in Hyderabad,

indicate that rowdy sheets (a record of a petty offender covering a wide variety of offences

under the purview of ‘preventing dangerous activity’) were being opened because their

activity was simply ‘being Muslim’.





Although dated, these results suggest that evidence to support the negative

perceptions of the police has been part of the public discourse for many

decades.

Custodial deaths and rapes continue to tarnish the police force’s public

image. Since state formation in November 2000, there have been six

custodial deaths in Chhattisgarh. One such death, in 2004, prompted

rioting in a rural area several kilometres from where I was based. From

local gossip and newspapers, I pieced together that the police accepted

money from a wealthy landowner in exchange for arresting a young

adivasi man, Ramkumar Dhruv. Ramkumar had rebuffed ‘tradition’ by

refusing to work the landowner’s land as generations past had done.

Arrested on trumped-up charges of gasoline theft, he later died from in-

juries sustained in police custody. The police released a statement that

Ramkumar had committed suicide by hanging, and dispensed with the

need for an autopsy by hastily burying the body. Equally, I was acquainted

with the sometimes dubious methods of obtaining confessions. On one

occasion, I found myself in a police station when Criminal Investigation

Department officers were investigating a high profile kidnapping case.

Some officers shared refreshments with me, all the while remaining im-

pervious to the cries of pain emanating from the ‘interrogation’ of an

alleged suspect in the next room. On another occasion, when discussing

human rights abuses with a female officer, I was taken aback when she

exclaimed rather indignantly, ‘Of course you have to beat them. How

else will you get the truth?’ When asked during a workshop on witchcraft

accusations whether female officers would be any more sensitive in cases

involving tonhi accusations, the Inspector General (Raipur Range)

replied, ‘Some female officers abuse and beat like men... Almost all

people abuse’.43

Taking into account the vast number of actions undertaken by the

police, it is possible that only a limited number are affected by corruption,

violence, partisan politics, etc. Nonetheless, the qualitative impact is

dramatic (Gupta 1995; Parry 2000). The citizen’s relationship with the

police is characterised as one of fear, distrust and lack of confidence.

One village headman summed up the general feelings:

43 Department of Social Welfare (Chhattisgarh) sponsored day workshop,

25 September 2004, jointly organised by the NGO Sankalp and myself.





Villagers fear the police. If you are wealthy, the police will take money

from you and if you are poor, they won’t show any interest in your

complaint at all. Even for myself, I never want to register a case be-

cause they ask too many questions.

Thus, when women accused as tonhi speak well of the police, they draw

attention to an incongruity in actual policing practices, and tell us about

the effects of the state on the everyday lives of rural people. Their nar-

ratives communicate a conscious agency on the part of the police force

and individual officers to avoid appearing as conspiring, negligent or

short-sighted: the police official could be perceived as a regular citizen

having a special and sometimes difficult public job.

VII

Concluding comments: Discretion with accountability

Different representations of authority exist and are linked to different

modalities of accountability. The media assembles particular images that

serve to fix in place particular narratives of brutal murders, credulous

villagers and an outraged ‘public’. Meanings of witchcraft and witch

accusations are appropriated and unified in such a way as to create a dis-

course of accountability directed at the state and in so doing, questions

arise about the state’s ability to act effectively. Thus, part of the responsi-

bility for accountability lies with citizens. This is not to say that the

same conceptual understandings are shared among citizens or that their

social purposes need always overlap. Public disapprobation of witch-

killing can exist (without contradiction) with the complex and incongru-

ous terrain of ‘other superstitions’. The ideas and texts of those with the

economic, political and cultural power to tell their stories in the media

draw on aspects of urban/rural and modern/traditional dichotomies, and

intersect with the interests of an active press as well as of politicians to

create multiple meanings that both challenge and reinforce ideas of devel-

opment, progress and modernity. For over a decade (and even more so

since state formation in 2000), tonhi accusations and a host of other

social problems have been openly framed in discourses of modernity,

whereby they are widely regarded as a threat to general social well-being

and socio-economic development.





The other part of the responsibility is delegated to the police who

occupy a crucial role in administering the points of interface between

citizens and the state. Encounters with the police open up a terrain of

unpredictability and obscurity as they are ultimately regulated by un-

written norms exercised through discretionary power. The normative

dimension is left out of theorising on discretion. The edges of discretion

vary from policy to policy and locale to locale, where police officers

selectively privilege the enforcement of certain procedures over others,

thus creating a puzzling (and at times, disturbing) ‘formlessness’ to the

character of police power and discretion. An enduring feature of relations

between the police and villagers are the discourses of corruption, brutality

and partisan politics. However, in a local context, discretion to craft re-

sponses to the local problem of witch-killings is socially produced, medi-

ated by institutional, political, moral and/or administrative norms that

converge. Witchcraft accusations engender feelings of accountability,

anxiety and uneasiness among the police and an unsettlement of policing

behaviours. This tension has produced discernable results. For the com-

plainants, their verbal complaints were recorded, promptly investigated,

the law was applied as widely as possible, cases opened and, where pos-

sible, placed before the courts. The police implemented preventative

measures, located medical care for the injured, expressed empathy and

offered advice. This police efficiency is to be applauded. In sum, the

police have and exercise ‘a permission, privilege [and] prerogative to

use judgment’ in wrestling with the social sites and actions that surround

witchcraft accusations (Kleinig 1996a: 3). The logic of this ‘practice at

work’ transmits the hope of humanisation, equality and citizenship rights

to those who are typically marginalised.

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