"Witch" killing in Assam

A BBC report:

More than 500 people have been killed in Assam - and half as many in neighbouring West Bengal - in the past few years because their neighbours thought they were witches.
A study on these killings by a Bengal police officer, Asit Baran Choudhury, suggests that most of those accused of practising witchcraft and then killed are "isolated families" with some landed property.
He says most of those killed are widows.
"Powerful people in the community target them to acquire the land," says the study.

Another instance of greed exploiting ignorance.

More like this

Mark Kleiman: Yes, the survey projected 600,000 excess deaths based on 547 actually reported deaths. That's what "sampling" means, doofus. Every four years, pollsters in the U.S. project the results of voting by 100,000,000 people based on samples of 1000 or so, and get within a few percentage…
It's a modern-day version of a long-running evil: children in Africa are being murdered in the name of God. The nine-year-old boy lay on a bloodstained hospital sheet crawling with ants, staring blindly at the wall. His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to…
RaceWire is reporting that Thomas Hagan, one of three men convicted for the assassination of Malcolm X (and the only to plead guilty), was released after his 17th attempt at parole yesterday. Hagan, at the time of the murder, was known as Talmadge X and was a militant member of the Nation of Islam…
Have people seen the coverage of these Blackwater hearings? The police officer, whom CNN is identifying only as Sarhan, said the Blackwater guards "seemed nervous" as they entered the square, throwing water bottles at the Iraqi police posted there and driving in the wrong direction. He said…