Khallikote: Attempts are being made by the district administration to save the locals of Gopalpur village under Khallikote block in Ganjam district from the clutches of witchcraft and sorcery.
Prevalence of superstitions and blind belief in the district among people is baffling the observers. Superstitions are still haunting a section of people cutting across cultural and religious barriers. Even the educated ones have fallen prey to them.
Sources said Panu Nahak, 50, and four other people of the village died due to some unknown diseases. Sushama, Subhadra, Kumari and Daka of the village developed the same symptoms after the death of the five persons.
The villagers are gripped by panic after the five deaths. The villagers came together and held a meeting to discuss the unusual happenings. People feared that deaths could have occurred because of sorcery and decided to take the help of witchcraft by collecting donations from the villagers.
Meanwhile, the local police and administration had received the news and sent a team of doctors to collect blood samples from the villagers in order to detect the diseases as soon as possible.
The village sarpanch, Khallikote MLA Daitari Behera, representative of block chairman Ratnakar Sahoo, IIC Satyaranjan Pradhan and tehsildar Chittaranjan Mohanta visited the village Saturday and took the patients to district headquarters hospital.
Sunday, doctors from MKCG Medical College and Hospital in Berhampur, led by Dr. Abani Kumar Mohapatra, reached the village and took the blood samples of the villagers. Abani said the primary investigation revealed that most of the villagers were suffering from anemia. “We will conduct various types of health tests of the villagers.”
Tehsildar Chittaranjan Mohanta said, “About 80 per cent of the population lives in villages and more than half of them are illiterate. A large section of our society believes in superstitions and therefore easily falls prey to it.” He appealed the youth to come forward for motivating the people to not believe in the superstitions and blind beliefs as they are “the biggest stumbling block to progress.”
Khallikote IIC Satyaranjan Pradhan said an awareness programme was conducted in the village to educate people on superstition. More such programmes would be conducted in future, he added.
AS IT HAPPENED
- After the death of five persons in Gopalpur, villagers apprehended that they had been caught in a spell
- They were about to resort to witchcraft and sorcery to break the spell, and were collecting donations for it
- Just then the district administration came to know of it and conducted blood tests of the villagers
- It was found that many villagers were suffering from anemia
PNN