Kendrapara: Driven by a superstition that if a pregnant woman dies without giving birth she would become an evil spirit and kill children of the locality, a man here slit open the womb of his dead pregnant wife, took out the dead child and later stitched it back.
Sources said Bhaskar Mallick, 40, a resident of Bhoipada in Pattamundai Police limits, opened the womb of his dead wife, Mamata Mallick, 35, Tuesday and removed the dead child.
Later, Bhaskar and his fellow villagers stitched back the womb of his dead wife, kept the dead child in his wife’s hands and placed his wife’s body under a banana plant in a mangrove forest on the banks of the Badanali river at Ramchandrapur in Mahakalapada block.
Bhaskar did this inhuman act due to the superstition that if a pregnant woman dies without delivering the child then she would become an evil spirit and kill the children of the village.
When the people of Ramchandrapur came to know about the matter Wednesday, they informed Tantiapala marine police station.
Police rushed to the spot and asked Bhaskar Mallick and his relatives to cremate the bodies of his wife and the child that had been kept near the river bank, said Ramakanta Behera, the in-charge at Tantiapala Marine Police Station.
Bhaskar Mallick and his relatives later cremated the body of his wife and the premature child. Bhaskar’s wife who was on the family way was rushed to a local hospital for treatment Tuesday morning as her condition became critical. She was later shifted to SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack where she died.
Bhaskar returned to his village with the body in the evening and discussed the matter with his relatives. The superstitious villagers advised Bhaskar to tear open his wife’s womb and take out the child and he did so.
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